HANDBOUND AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
LIVES
ILLUSTRIOUS AND DISTINGUISHED
IRISHMEN.
LIVES
or
ILLUSTRIOUS AND DISTINGUISHED
IKISHMEN, ^ ,)
• C •
FROM
THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT PERIOD,
ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER,
AND EMBODYING A
HISTORY OF IRELAND IN THE LIVES OF IRISHMEN,
KDITED P.V
JAMES WILLS, A.M.T.C.D., M.R.I.A.,
Author of Letter* on the Philosophy of Unbelief, &c., <tc., Ac.
EMBELLISHED BY A SERIES OF HIGHLY-FINISHED PORTRAITS, SELECTED FROM THE MOST AUTHENTIC SOURCES, AND ENGRAVED BY EMINENT ARTISTS.
VOL. IV.
DUBLIN:
MACGREGOR, POLSON, & CO., 10, UPPER ABBEY STREET,
AND 75, ARGYLL STREET, GLASGOW^
D. G. SUTHERLAND & CO., 71, YORK ST., BELFAST;
M'GOWAN & CO., 16, GREAT WINDMILL STREET, LONDON.
MDCCCXLII.
DR
IrJSS
CONTENTS OF VOL. IV.
FOURTH PERIOD, i. — POLITICAL SERIES — continued.
PAGE
1. Sir Richard Cox . . 1
2. William Molyneux, . . 28
3. Richard Coote, Earl of Bella-
mont, .... 43
4. Sir Faithful Fortescue, . 46
5. Rohert, First Viscount Moles-
worth, .... 48
6. Arthur Dillon, . . . 51
7. Almericus de Courcy, Baron
Kingsale, . . .52
8. Richard Fitz- Patrick, Lord
Gowran, . . . 53
9. Sir William Jumper, . .54
10. Sir James Hamilton, First
Viscount Strabane, . 55
11. Sir Eyre Coote, ... 56
12. POSTSCRIPT, ... 58
II. — ECCLESIASTICAL SERIES.
13. Thomas Jones, Archbishop of
Dublin, . . . . CO
14. Matthew de Oviedo, Titular
Archbishop of Dublin, . 62
16. Henry Usher, Primate of Ire- land, .... . 66 16. James Usher, Primate of Ire- land, . . 67
PAGE
1 7. Lancelot Bulkeley, Archbishop
of Dublin, . . .128
18. William Bedell, . . 130
19. John Bramhal, Primate of Ire-
land, . . . .169
20. Heber Macmahon, . . 185
21. James Margetson, Primate, . 188
22. John Leslie, Bishop of Clogher, 192
23. Jeremy Taylor, . . 194
24. Francis Marsh, Archbishop of
Dublin, . . . . 266
25. Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop
of Dublin, . .. ". 267
26. Anthony Dopping, . . 275
27. William King, Archbishop of
Dublin, . . . 277
28. Rev. John Richardson, . 319
29. Charles Leslie, ." .. . 323
30. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St
Patrick's, » . .331
31. St George Ashe, Bishop of
Derry, ... 442
32. Dr Thomas Sheridan, . . 443
33. Dr Patrick Delany, . . 449
34. William Nicholson, Bishop of
Derry, . . . .454
35. Edward Synge, Archbishop of
Tuam, . . . 456
36. Hugh Boulter, Primate, . 457
37. Thomas Parnell, Archdeacon of
Clogher, . . . 468
38. John Sterne, Bishop of Clogher, 470
453, ,;
Published fa Ma^yrnycrr. Pels an, & G? Jhfibi/u
fry .Maqyr&yor. foLsoTv &
S s
'? fy Jf&qpregor J'oLson/ &. Co.
LIVES
Of
ILLUSTRIOUS AND DISTINGUISHED IRISHMEN.
Sir
BORN A.D. 1650 DIED A.D. 1733.
AT the commencement of a new volume, we feel that it may not be without its uses to remind our readers, of a fact already noticed briefly in one of the concluding memoirs appertaining to the wars of the revolution in 1689? that the remainder of the period in which we are engaged, contains little material for the biographer. In the more enlarged view of history, it offers as little to the contemplation of the historian. And as the great importance of the subsequent divisions of this work, and the limits to which we are pledged, demand some economy of our space and time, it will be necessary that we should pass through this comparatively barren and unprogressive period of our history with proportionable succinctness and speed. It is true that this very chasm in the progress of events, and in the succession of persons and characters of interest, would seem to demand much comment, and to challenge our best faculties of inquiry or explana- tion; but the commentary may, for the most part, be found in the events of the time. Much valuable matter we shall endeavour to reserve for occasions of far more attractive interest, while we en- deavour, for the present, to select a few names of sufficient general interest, for the purpose of concluding this long and not uneventful division of the political history of Ireland. To this more summary course, we are here the more induced, because in the course of some of the most important and interesting memoirs, which must occupy the chief ground in the ecclesiastical, and still more in the literary divisions of the same period, it will become absolutely necessary to enter into many details of the political history of the very period which we are now to pass with slighter notice. Of this we may offer as an example the life of Swift, of which an interesting portion is connected with the politics of Ireland in his time.
Here, therefore, a few brief remarks as to the character of this residual period, and the cause of its general want of real historic in-
VOL. iv. A
2 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
terest, may be enough. We have already explained the manner in which the individual celebrity of the persons whom it has been hitherto our task to notice, has arisen in a greater degree from the station which it was their fortune to occupy in the political scene, than to any of the ordinary causes which entitle illustrious characters to historic notice. As, however, the course of events became more quiet, uniform, and unmarked by violent and stormy changes, it was an evident con- sequence that the number and individual prominence of such subjects should also diminish in the same proportion. Hence it is, that in the long interval of political torpor, from the treaty of Limerick, through the reigns of Anne and the first two Georges — the remainder of this division — our political persons are comparatively without note. Such is the ground upon which we conceive it expedient to adopt the course which we have described, by selecting a few names, rather with a view to offer a brief outline of the history of their time, than to protract our labour, without interest to the reader, by a dull array of obscure politicians, and official persons.
We should, indeed, most willingly have avoided entering upon even the most cursory notice of the principal questions which offer them- selves in the political history of the period now to occupy our atten- tion; for the time when they may be discussed with historic indiffer- ence, is hardly yet arrived. Though dull and barren of great or striking events, the period immediately following the revolution was troubled by party dissensions which, to the impartial mind, are painful to contemplate ; and to the prepossessions of party feeling, are identi- fied with the fierce and clamorous questions by which the existing generation is possessed. Like every period of our history, the reign of Queen Anne has, with few exceptions, been too largely seen through the coloured media of party feeling, and the rhetorical exaggerations and artifices of those who have repeated their illusory statements until they have believed them. To this unhappily large class of writers and speakers, and to the still larger classes who draw their entire stock of historic opinion from them, the whole history of Ire- land is so discoloured by fallacy and passionate prejudice, that no candour can come up to the measure of their exactions, and no con- cession short of a surrender of truth and reason can satisfy their expectations. The very intent of history is overlooked; and many readers, of the most respectable character and intelligence in other matters, do not scruple openly to demand from the historian some evidence of national, or rather party feeling. Now, for the general good sense, and even for the zealous nationality of such readers, we are quite sincere in professing our respect and regard; but we must here again (as we have often done) remind them, that the office of the historian is as strictly judicial as that of the judge; and that it is his duty, and indeed the most difficult and responsible por- tion of his task, to exclude all nationality, and all the predilections of sect and party from his mind. The prepossessions from which, as an individual, he cannot be exempt, the inclination to favour the policy or creed which claims his support, and the natural re- pugnance of the independent spirit to concede anything to violence, or even for a moment to seem to echo the clamour of popular turbu-
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 3
Lerice ; all these must be suppressed by the historian who desires to proceed in the discharge of an office, before the tribunal of which prince and peasant must stand in the strict level of unbiassed equity, and parties of every denomination be viewed as nothing more than inflamed aggregations of human passion and opinion, driving like the clouds before the wind that bears along the fate of nations to the event destined by a higher will.
So far as the character of our own labours is concerned, we may unhesitatingly affirm, that, however, to the more intelligent discern- ment of critical estimation, we may be found deficient in many of the endowments, acquired or natural, which our present employment may require, we have been scrupulously and anxiously true to the principle of impartial truth. We are far from setting up the absurd claim to be held exempt from the charge of error; but we may boldly insist on being allowed to have preserved the utmost indifference to the requisitions of party feeling on either side. The great and prominent parties into which Ireland has been for many ages unhappily divided, we have viewed, and shall continue to view, as men having by nature the same merits and demerits, placed in different situations and circum- stances, and in each, acting with that mixture of crime and virtue, wisdom and folly, knowledge and ignorance, which belongs to the human character. Whatever may be their creed, or nation, or party, the mass of mankind is swayed by impulses and motives of no very high order. And, in accordance with this fact, we think it quite absurd for any party of the present day to insist upon the immaculate virtue of its political ancestry. The practical machinery of states always has been, and will be liable to be worked (in detail at least) by officials of no very extended views of public good, and chiefly actuated by the selfish impulses which are mostly uppermost in the mind of man. For this reason it is, that in troubled and barbarous eras, what- ever may be the essential character of the ruling party, there must be a large mixture of injustice, crime, and malversation, found in the sinks and under- channels of official agency. The partisan of either side will always find ample matter for complaint and recrimination without departing from truth, further than is involved in one-sided statements.
But after the worst shall have been said on either side, or on both, it is worth the reader's while to recollect, and keep in view, that after all no material question is decided. Thus, when we have strongly sketched out the excesses and horrors of the barbarous followers of Sir Phelim O'Neile — the flagrant tyrannies and malversations of the government agents and officials which prolonged and aggravated this wretched state of things; — when we have painted freely the stormy disaffection of the chiefs — the more politic intrigues of the ecclesiastics which succeeded — the treachery of Tyrconnel — the fatal bigotry of James — or, lastly, when we lament the subsequent sufferings of the Irish papists, (the natural consequence of these,) during the succeeding reigns : throughout the whole of these statements, the great leading questions, at the present day agitated between the same parties, re- main unaffected by anything we have thought proper to say. The principles of the churches of England and Rome do not enter into our
4 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
scope ; the conduct of their respective supporters must be referred to other conditions, so far as any question of right or wrong, merit or demerit, is involved. According to the several views of the advocates for either church, their conduct is to be weighed in the moral scale; their pretensions are to be referred to their respective credentials; it is no part of our undertaking to decide between them. But there is also a political estimate, which cannot, in the same degree, be elimi- nated from these pages. According to this, it has been often our task, at the same time, to defend the general policy of the English govern- ment, and to reprobate the entire spirit and practice of its practical application. To this fact, we are anxious more especially to invite the reader's notice ; for in Irish history, it claims the place of a principle, and its due admission would save much misapprehension. We have now to apply it to the reigns chiefly to pass before us, before we con- clude this series.-
The reigns of queen Anne and her next immediate successors, are rendered memorable in Irish history by the extreme and severe de- pression of the members of the Romish communion. A deepening array of oppressive, and nearly intolerable exactments, rendered their condition such as cannot now be contemplated by humane minds of any creed without pity. The penal laws, which we shall hereafter detail, are, by the more sanguine spirits of one side, looked upon as excused by justice and expediency; by their fiery opponents as unatonable wrongs. The truth is far within these extremes; and because it is an instructive truth, we thus place it at the commence- ment of the first of those few remaining sketches, in which we propose to comprise the history of a period, marked by the obscure commencement of a state of things, which pre-eminently exacts the utmost precaution to steer clear of the prejudiced politics of two great opposite parties, to both of which, the entire history of this island appears through the dust and vapour of protracted and violent contention.
The fury of the stubborn and sanguinary contests which we have detailed in our last previous volume, was followed by that reaction which is the inevitable result of every extreme vibration in the balance of human affairs. Popular violence was followed by that prostration of strength, wnich was its proper and immediate consequence. The restoration of the powers of civil control, and the re-establishment of municipal jurisdictions and authorities, was attended with disadvan- tages which we are obliged to separate, carefully and precisely, from all the common accusations which mere party warfare has devised, in opposition to these jurisdictions and authorities. In conceding facts, which the violence of faction has converted into weapons of offence on either side, it becomes more especially needful to guard against mistakes. When we admit and lament the severity with which the Papal party in Ireland was coerced, we must admit the strong apparent necessity of that coercion. While we admit that it led to unhappy consequences, and to much injustice and oppression, it is ne- cessary to deny that those consequences lay within the scope of human wisdom to foresee, or that the injustice was designed. Nor can we omit to observe, that in the due appreciation of these, or any other
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 5
precautionary measures, it would be essential to weigh the full conse- quences of their neglect ; and it should be maturely considered, whether the sufferings and calamities of Ireland were, or were not, far greater before than after these measures; whether the wasting disease of centuries had not been a protracted struggle between two great classes ; in which, if neither could be expected to submit, it was nevertheless evident that the submission of either was necessary to civil order. And if the question of which is thus once raised, it be- comes evident that the actually ruling power was fully justified in enforcing the essential submission to the existing order of things, by all necessary means. The general enactments were the result of a harsh necessity of the times ; their occasional abuse, the work of those private agencies to which such times have ever given birth. Let us look on a few of the facts which lay before the wisdom of that age: the whole would here demand too wide a scope. The long and earnest under-currents of intrigue, by which, in pursuance of con- scientious opinions, it was sought to establish the Papal power in Ireland, at last broke out into a struggle, in which, for some terrible years, the Protestant party suffered all the extremities and hardships in a tenfold degree, of which their political opponents had afterwards reason to complain. At the close of this dreadful crisis, (for such it was,) some facts were strongly impressed on the mind of the pre- dominant party. The great leading object of the pleaders of the popular side, namely, the establishment of a foreign supremacy, actually political in its nature, within the kingdom, was clearly and incontrovertibly inconsistent with the first principles of government; this alone, in the then existing state of the Papal power, fully authorized all necessary constraints and disabilities of those who acknowledged a power so unconstitutional.* This real and right- ful principle was enforced by others of more doubtful validity : it was the sense of those who had escaped with life and fortune from the oppression of James and his unprincipled minion Tyrconnel, that safety was only to be found in the possession of an iron system of control. Resentment and prejudice, which neither party is entitled to impute as reproach to the other, did their work, and more than their work, for a time. But it is here only just to observe, that these unhappy results of national strife can hardly be imputed to the better classes of the gentry and aristocracy, in whose continued kindness and sym-
* It is our study to separate to the utmost our statements from all consideration of the politics of the present time. But so nearly do they seem to approach, that, if our space allowed, we should desire to show wherein they are different. This we cannot here effect satisfactorily. But there is a principle of judgment which we would here suggest to both parties — who each in their own way look too much to the past. The result of a violent party struggle, of which, principles far more wide than those of the beginning of the 18th century have been the main elements, has been a high inflammation of all the natural feelings of party warfare. The excitement itself constitutes a larger portion of the disorder of the times than is generally allowed, and gives to all the popular impulses a great part of their force and venom. Complaints, once the cause, are now but the missiles of a revolutionary conflict. But the full demonstration and development of this neglected fact would demand a separate volume. It is here enough for the writer to say, that his state- ments are, in his own political theory, wholly distinct from the real questions of public writers of the day.
POLITICAL SERIES. [FoURTH
pathy, the severities of the law, and the interested persecutions of hungry officials, found their only, but effective, restraint and allevia- tion.
Of these preliminary reflections, the attentive readers of the memoirs which remain to complete this period, will see the necessity. The character of the time which it includes is so widely different from that which has hitherto occupied our care, that it should have formed a distinct division, but for the barrenness of character and event, which rendered it inexpedient to incur the disadvantages of a formal and cumbrous separation of its more scanty and less interesting matter from the general course of our history. The change of political char- acter, though great and obvious, presents little for the biographer; and to give it consistence sufficient to warrant the formal introduction which the plan of this work assigns to each of its separate periods, we should be compelled to notice names which have no pretension to a place in the record of history, or to pursue the memorial of secondary characters and events to an inordinate length.
Having premised this brief statement, we shall feel ourselves, for the remainder of this period, warranted to proceed with that brevity of statement which our general limits demand.
Sir Richard Cox is one of the few eminent persons belonging to the period before us, whose rise in the state was independent of the fortune of wars and revolutions, or the accidents of birth. He was a man whose high moral and intellectual endowments, would in any age, under circumstances not peculiarly unfavourable, have attained the highest civil distinctions. He has equal pretensions to a place among our political and literary heroes ; but we are now reduced to the ne- cessity of continuing our political history under such names as may be found not inappropriate. He was born in Bandon, in the year 1650. His father was a captain of horse, and died while his son was yet but three years old; he was, in consequence, transferred to the care of his maternal grandfather. This gentleman having also died in a few years, the charge appears to have devolved to his son, Mr John Bird, of Clonakilty. By his care, young Cox received the first rudiments of education, at a grammar-school in Clonakilty. Here, it is said, he showed strong indications of that industry and talent which afterwards became the foundation of his success in life. His taste for the practice of the law was developed, perhaps, by the accident of his uncle hold- ing the office of Seneschal in the manorial courts, under the appoint- ment of one of the Boyle family. In this obscure court, young Cox began to practise as an attorney, in his eighteenth year; and, as a matter of course, his practice soon extended to the other court of ses- sion held by the civil authorities of that old borough, from which, until the Union, the earls of Shannon returned two members to par- liament. The practice of these minor courts was (and is) such as to demand no very extended acquaintance with the law, and in the narrow range of cases which fell under their jurisdiction, a considerable dis- cretion was assumed or vested in the officers. Such, indeed, is one of the abuses still partially existing in the present day in the few manorial courts which remain, the refuge of petty tyranny and insubor- dination, and the disgrace of the legislature. In these courts the lino
PEIUOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 7
of demarcation between the practice of the attorney and the advocate was but indistinct ; and here, in the advocacy of such petty cases as demanded little more than a shrewd common sense, and a ready tongue, and the knowledge of the rules and equities of the petty dealings of a little obscure seaport, the forensic propensities of this eminent lawyer were developed and confirmed; though, we may presume, little in- structed.
Such a range could not long continue to confine the ambition of a mind so alert and industrious. Finding his means sufficient, Cox en- tered his name, in 1661, as a law student, in Gray's Inn. Here his superior intelligence soon raised him into notice ; and having complet- ed his terms, and the course of legal attainment then considered neces- sary, he returned to his native country, and soon after contracted a marriage with a lady, who had, or was reputed to have, rights to a large property. For a young legal aspirant, a lawsuit seems to have been no inappropriate fortune ; but he was destined to be less fortu- nate as a suitor than as a servant of the law, and failed in making good the claims of his wife. The circumstance appears to have given for some years an unfavourable turn to his views in life: his spirits may have been depressed by feeling himself hopelessly involved in a poor connexion, at a period of life which most demands the exertion of free and unencumbered powers. It is still more likely that his funds were exhausted, and that residence in town was become no longer practicable. He returned to Clonakilty, where he took a farm, and sunk gradually into that kind of indolence of pursuit, to which persons of intellectual temper are most liable, when deprived of their congenial and proper excitement in the atmosphere of ambition or studious conversation.
But while his talents lay unemployed, and the native impulses of his mind stood still, the progress of time was marked by the increase of his family. His lady, whose promise of wealth had dissolved into an unsubstantial disappointment, was fortunate in the production of a numerous gradation of youthful mouths, which demanded to be fed ; and Richard Cox was roused from the quiet ease of his farm, to the anxious consideration of the ways and means of life.
By the kindness of Sir Robert Southwell, he was quickly restored to the high road of advancement. In 1685, being then in his thirtieth year, he was elected recorder of Kinsale, and removed with his young family to Cork, where he entered at once on the practice of his pro- fession, with rapid and honourable success.
His professional progress was destined to be retarded by interrup- tions, which were afterwards in no small degree instrumental to his rise. He had attained considerable practice, when his natural sa- gacity enabled him to perceive the approach of that reverse to the protestant interests in Ireland, which we have already so fully traced in a former memoir. The succession of James II. to the throne was the commencement of a strenuous effort to restore the supremacy of the two kingdoms to the Pope; and though the settled" principles, and advanced political maturity of England, made it necessary to proceed with a cautious and underhand progress ; in Ireland, where very oppo- site conditions prevailed, the real intentions of the court were not to
8 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
be overlooked by any person of ordinary observation. In Ireland, the mass of the aristocracy, as well as of the commercial interests, were protestant, and the civil authorities and legal constitution had that con- formity which such a predominance of interest demanded in that age. But the peasantry were of the communion of the church of Rome ; and they had now, since the days of James I., been governed by their priest- hood a body of men against whom it is no accusation to say, that their
whole political morality was then centred in an earnest and conscien- tious principle of devotion to the Roman See. To this statement is to be added, that there was a large intermixture of persons and families of broken fortune, from varied causes, who were of the popular persua- sion, and who had never relinquished the prospect of a reinstatement in possessions, which justice, the fortune of war, or the vicissitudes of fortune, and the advance of commercial wealth, had long transferred into other hands. With such elements smouldering under the recollec- tions of 1 64 1 , and though hidden by the ashes of a generation scarcely extinct, it needed no deep insight to perceive what was to be the effect of a new struggle, in which these elements of wreck and ruin were to be blown by the breath of royal power and influence. To calculate on the same reaction in favour of right and justice, was not beyond the compass of reason; but far too unsatisfactory and uncertain for the fears of the boldest, who, like Cox, looked practically on the course of events. He relinquished his advantages, and sacrificing a present in- come of £300 a-year, removed for security with his family to Bristol.
He had, however, by that time, fortunately attained considerable re- putation as a sound lawyer and able advocate, and being well known, he was not long destitute of business, but contrived to obtain an income competent to the support of his family, which consisted of a wife and five children. It was during this interval that he compiled the greater part of his known historical work, entitled "Hibernia Anglicana," often referred to in these memoirs.
Thus engaged, Cox continued at Bristol till the landing of the prince of Orange in England. On this event, while all was yet doubt, em- barrassment, and the confused clamour of party, he hastened to London, and took a decided, and, we believe, not ineffectual part, in favour of the revolution. He published a pamphlet, in which he insisted on the necessity of giving the crown to William, and of sending relief to Ireland. His merits were at once recognised, or his patrons were at least efficient in recommending them. He was made under-secretary of state ; and soon after accompanied Sir Robert Southwell, as secre- tary, to Ireland. His eminent sagacity, and extensive acquirements, here became so conspicuous, that he rose in the royal regard with rapidity; and when Waterford was surrendered, he was at once ap- pointed recorder to that city. This was but a step to further eleva- tion ; and few mouths elapsed when he was raised to the bench, as one of the justices of the common pleas, on the 13th of September, 1690.
At this period of our history, the several functions of administration had not yet received the separate and ascertained character which belongs to mature forms and states of government. There was a ne- cessary indistinctness in the limits of the different departments; the restrictions of civil form and professional privilege were comparatively
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 9
slight. The circumstance was at least favourable to talent: the person whose skill, superior efficiency, knowledge, moral virtues, or perhaps vices, raised him to rank or station, seldom failed to obtain employ- ment, and to be raised to authority, in whatever department his incli- nation prompted him to look for promotion, or his capability recom- mended him. Cox, who in addition to considerable acquirements in general and professional knowledge, possessed an active temper and great practical sagacity, was thus prepared to catch to the utmost every gale of favour and preferment. He had been hardly raised to a rank which would now be considered to demand the full devotion of the entire available industry of the most competent lawyer, when he ob- tained a promotion of equal importance, which must have exacted equal activity and confidence in a different department, having, in about half a-year from the date of his judicial appointment, been made military governor of Cork.
For this latter station Cox was eminently fitted; at least if regard be had to the time. His firm temper of mind and sagacious under- standing communicated to his entire conduct that decided and un- bending line of duty which the condition of that province demanded; while a stern and high-minded integrity obtained for him the respect of those who had any regard for such qualities, and ensured him the cordial support of those who were the immediate witnesses of his actions, and whose support was most needful. But, as inevitably must happen, and always has happened, in the struggles of Ireland,— where the inveteracy of party feeling renders men incapable of estimating human actions on any general ground of obligation, — his conduct in this station has been loudly arraigned for the extreme rigour which he was compelled to have recourse to. Writers who have discussed the confused politics of that period have too much suffered their understanding and temper to be absorbed in its spirit, not only entering with an undue warmth into the passions of the parties, but absolutely putting on their colours, ranging under their banners, and seeing through the medium of their prejudices. But after having witnessed the flagrant realities of the long and calamitous struggle of the revolution, and seen the actual and fearful effects of an universal relaxation of all the bonds of order, he was too well taught, that tranquillity, general security, and the peace- able progress of social improvement and civilization, were only to be obtained by the powerful and summary suppression of turbulent spirits, — only to be secured by the rough and stern hand of force. It is always easy for those whose habits of mind have been warped by perpetual advocacy, and who are engaged in the partial endeavour to justify and palliate every act of the side they espouse, to persuade themselves to such an extent, in favour of fallacies which are habitually diffused throughout the very texture of their intellects; as to imagine, that while the popular mind was in a state of unnatural excitement, their leaders still alert to seize occasion, while the hope of returning confusion made men ready to defy the law, and a generation trained to crime and insubordination, was, like suppressed fire, ever starting at every air-hole, — to imagine that they were to be held in peaceable and orderly subjection by the calm and tempered routine of balanced equity and justice. Popular excitement, never at any time grounded on the
10 POLITICAL SERIES. [FoUllTH
dictates of political wisdom or justice, never was, or will be calmed by the appeal to reason, or satisfied in any way but by an unreserved triumph ; unless when reason and justice are fortunately sanctioned and enforced by such means as alone can be felt or comprehended by untrained in- telLects and undisciplined passions. But in that uncivilized genera- tion, the salvation of the land depended entirely on a timely and vigor- ous application of the only resource which their moral and intellectual condition permitted to be even understood ; and we therefore consider it to the praise of Cox, that he availed himself effectually of those means. During his government in the county of Cork, though the frontier of his province extended eighty miles, with twenty garrisons under his charge, he continued to preserve order, unknown elsewhere, and never allowed the Jacobites to gain an inch of ground.
We may mention one instance of firmness and vigorous promp- titude, which happened in this period of his life, the political history of which we have sufficiently detailed. De Ginckle had written to go- vernor Cox to request a thousand of the Cork militia, who, under his superintendence, are said to have arrived at a very high state of mili- tary discipline, though the fact does not appear from the following anecdote. Of the required force all had already marched but 160 men, who positively refused to stir from their country. The colonel, after a vain resort to every means of persuasion, repaired to Cox, who declared that he would soon make them march. Surrounded by a party of gentlemen and officers, he rode up to them, and in a com- manding and firm tone, asked why they were not on their march. One of them stood forth, and began to reply ; the governor interrupted and addressed them in a few words, in which he asserted his power over them; but added, that as he did not desire the company of cowards, he would not use it; — he said, that he was sure there were among them some who were not afraid to fight for a king and country they loved, and that such would follow him; the rest might return to their homes." They all felt, and answered the appeal to their pride by im- mediate submission to order.
His able and spirited discharge of duties, so apparently foreign from his previous habits, obtained for Cox great and universal reputa- tion. His commission and the scope of his government were con- siderably enlarged; and he continued to display a degree of active prudence, and decision of conduct, which effected the happiest results. He not only received the thanks of the English government, for the successful vigilance by which he preserved the public tranquillity in Ireland, but also the warmest expressions of gratitude from the nume- rous persons whose property he saved from devastation and pillage. As the enlargement of his jurisdiction had been occasioned by the fear of a French invasion, he was under the necessity of taking some pre- cautions, which were, in the then state of Ireland, indispensably neces- sary, but calculated to cast some unpopularity on his character: the disarming the papists was, nevertheless, effected with a mild forbear- ance, and a regard to circumstances, not often to be met in the history of the country. He carried this harsh necessity into effect without irritating those who were its object, or bringing them into suspicion; and, using a sane and temperate discretion, he managed to limit the
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 11
measure to the real urgency of the supposed danger, and to avoid leaving respectable persons, from whom nothing was to be really apprehended, in a defenceless condition. The threat of invasion was, however, soon dispelled, by the defeat of the French fleet at La Hogue, in May.
In the same year, 1692, after having gone the summer circuit in the southern districts, with judge Reynel, he returned to Dublin; where, on the 5th of November, he was knighted by the lord Sidney, at that time lord-lieutenant of the kingdom.
In 1693, he was elected as a member of the Philosophical Society, which, about ten years before, had been founded by the exertions of the well-known William Molyneux, who was then more known as a philosopher than he has subsequently become as the author of a politi- cal pamphlet, which must be presently noticed in these pages. On this occasion, he read an essay containing his geographical account of the counties of Derry and Antrim. In the same year, he paid a visit to England, where he met with cordial attention and favour, from lord- treasurer Godolphin, and the other ministers of government. On this occasion he obtained an order from the treasury for the abatement of one half of his quitrent. He was also appointed on the commission for Irish forfeitures, with a salary of £900 a-year. This honour- able testimony to his talent, and the known high integrity of his character, had the undesirable consequence of plunging him more immediately within the vortex of cabal and factious clamour, which had been the distinguishing affliction of Ireland at all times, but never more conspicuously than at that period. As we have observed at the commencement of this memoir, those acrimonious dissensions which have never since allowed any intermission for the progress of national prosperity were in their beginning ; and it was impossible to be actively connected with either of the two great factions, which filled the great arena of contention, jobbing, disaffection, falsehood and misrepresenta- tion, injustice and crime, without being soon vilified by the tongue of one or both sides, as the part taken was subservient to either, or honestly independent of both. And if there ever has been a moment when a dignified separation from the .practices of every party, or set of men, was essential to upright and sound principles of conduct, it was then ; when we feel it necessary to admit, after a careful perusal of the inflamed statements of the historical advocates of either side, their accusations, and the angry recriminations of both, are sub- stantially correct.
The progress of national prosperity — of agriculture, trade, and manners, were forcibly interrupted by the great political convulsion consequent on the crime and infatuation of king James ; arid as has but too continually and peculiarly been the misfortune of this island, those peaceful processes, which constitute the national order and secure the means of national advance, were broken, and for a pe- riod destroyed. The contest for the maintenance or recovery of real or imaginary rights; — the revenge of fancied wrongs; — the violent precautions against real but exaggerated dangers; — the in- trigues for power or property which an unsettled state of things must ever induce and favour; — the discouragement to commercial in-
12 POLITICAL SERIES. [FouRTH
vestment from the insecurity of property, and the inadequate protec- tion of law; — and the advantage which rival nationality or corporate feeling will be always ready to take of such a disorganized state of things, all operated to depress and degrade the Irish nation. The people who are enfeebled and degraded by internal hate and dissen- sion— as well as by vain contention against a dominant power, even if the claims of resistance should be dignified by right, will meet small if any allowance in that vast collision of human interests, out of which order and light arise by a law different from that which the patriot in his zeal, which is seldom according to knowledge, or the theorist in his wide and wild, yet insufficient scope of speculation, is ever led to con- template. This island, with all its great national advantages, had been so kept back by a hapless alternation of violent civil wars, and the stag- nant calms which followed — that in the end of the seventeenth century her connexion with England, which should, according to the natural law of social workings, have been productive of an increase of national prosperity, was on the other hand too unequal to be advantageous. The diffusion of equality, which is the progressive result of natural underworkings, and not of voluntary concession, was from time to time sought to be extorted by demands which never have been or will be suc- cessful, being grounded in mistake ; and the existing state of depression naturally presented itself as the basis of English policy. To avoid generalizing beyond the scope of this memoir, Ireland was in a condi- tion which impeded those operations of settlement and commerce, that lead to prosperity, which invited the fatal proceedings of the political adventurer, and sanctioned the policy according to which her interests were made secondary to those of England.
So tenacious, and so vital indeed, are the real principles of human progress, that a quiet acquiescence in the domination of England — mortifying as it was to national pride, and frequently injurious to national interests — would have by degrees settled into that quiet on- ward order of things, which no ordinary interference can prevent, that leads to the true fundamental basis of independence, wealth, and know- ledge. We are far — for our own part — from wishing to cast reproach on those, who, finding themselves depressed by law, or by circum- stances, were earnestly bent on obtaining that level which is the in- stinctive moral tendency of human nature : the degree of wisdom or of equity to be claimed from party will, is moderate indeed ; it is enough that the claimant is sincere in his error, (supposing it such). But what we would here enforce as the lesson of the time on which we write, is, that these contentious claims were unfortunate : they per- petuated distinctions, prejudices, and animosities, which must have been forgotten and flung aside like foam from the stream of things, had they been let alone. The means which are taken by the multi- tude to break their imaginary bonds, have ever been the traceable means by which they have been rivetted. Human error never produces its full sum of evil consequence, until it becomes the adopted principle of political faction and party feeling. It is then adopted and kept alive, without any regard to its intrinsic value: the growth of knowledge, the diffusive light of growing civilization, with its concomitant bles- sings, would distance and purge away the influences of old prejudices
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 13
as they grow virtually inconsistent with an advanced order of things ; but error becomes enshrined by the popular enthusiasm, when it holds the place of the banner under which the political animosity of each successive age has rallied to a destructive and undying contest.
Such are the reflections awakened by the study of the hapless posi- tion of affairs which arose out of the wars of the revolution in Ireland: they are to be illustrated by every fact, which we shall have to state, so far as our statements shall bear any relation to the affairs of the country.
The first ill, resulting from the depression of this country, after the war, was the destruction of trade, which had long been advancing under the protection of an improved internal administration. The entire tissue of commercial interests, with every other interest but that of military license and official malversation, had previously been rent to shreds by the successive inflictions of two great par- ties, as by turns they rose uppermost in the struggle, and of the fierce collision in the field which crushed them into stillness. Nevertheless, the machinery of progress had been introduced, and re- ceived a fixed station in the constitution of affairs; the power, which had put down the struggle, was visibly sufficient to maintain order, and preserve the civil rights of men ; and the suspended functions of trade would have quickly regained their condition, if left to the fair and full development of the resources of the country.
In the first ten years from the conclusion of the revolutionary wars, the trading interests of the country appear to have not only regained their level, but to have been advancing with an acceleration unknown in previous instances of national recovery from the effects of internal convulsion. Irish exports experienced a rapid increase from 1696 to 1698, and there was a balance of trade in favour of the country, en- tirely attributed to the exportation of wool. The commercial jealousy of the English Commons was excited, and the king was compelled to give way to the clamorous expression of discontent ; this discontent, when fairly appreciated according to the knowledge of the time, was not quite unreasonable. The consequence was fatal to Ireland ; in an evil hour the exportation of woollen manufacture from Ireland was prohibited; the first consequences of this measure appear to have been as deplorable as those of the previous destructive war ; the linen trade, which has never thoroughly taken root in Ireland, was not yet established, and the numbers of poor people who lived by the woollen manufacture, were thrown out of bread, while the landed proprietors were impoverished, and a scarcity of money and consequent rise of prices was produced: great multitudes of protestant families were thus also forced to emigrate, which, considering that the advance of the national prosperity altogether depended on the protestant population, was at the time an irreparable mischief. These disastrous consequences are strongly represented in the various resolutions of the Irish parliament immediately following, in which the extreme poverty of the kingdom is pleaded, and redress earnestly sought. This distressing condition con- tinued for many years, as may be seen by any one who desires for de- tailed information, in the journals of the Commons during the reign of queen Anne. We shall here only add what justice to England demands
14 POLITICAL SERIES. [FoURTH
from us, that she made the most liberal efforts to repair the mischief in the following reigns, by opening her markets to our linen manu- facture, and by large grants of money to the amount of £10,000 per annum for many years, for the encouragement of the exportation of Irish linen. But* we shall find occasion to renew the subject further on.
So early as 1690, an address was proposed in the parliament of England, " That the sum of one million be raised, on the credit, or by the sale of the forfeited estates in Ireland, and that an address be pre- sented to his majesty, that he would be pleased to command the com- missioners in Ireland to make a return of the names of the persons in rebellion in that kingdom, and of their estates, and the value thereof, and that the same might be transmitted to the House of Commons:" the address was rejected, but it was voted that a bill should be brought in for the attainder of those persons who had been con- cerned in rebellion in England or Ireland, and for confiscating their estates, and applying the proceeds to the expense of the war then pending with France. When the bill was brought in, about six weeks after, a clause was proposed, empowering the king to grant one third of the forfeited lands to such as had served in the Irish war. This was rejected, and numerous petitions and applications were made in the progress of this bill, from the creditors of some of the persons implicated, and the heirs of many: the house disembarrassed itself of the perplexity of meeting such applications, by an inconsiderate rejec- tion of the whole. The lords, naturally less factious, received the bill in a more judicial and equitable spirit, and resolved on paying a due regard to all petitions, and added many conditions and clauses, which were likely to generate opposition and delay. The king sent a message to the commons, which, we cannot but view as injudicious, both as implying unconstitutional concessions of the power of the crown, and also as liable to the misconception which afterwards occur- red. He pledged himself to grant none of the land in question, but to reserve the consideration of their disposal for another session. It is a strange instance of the abuse of language, that notwithstanding this assurance, his majesty considered himself only pledged against any gratuitous donation to courtiers or friends, but that he was yet at liberty to consider just claims, and reward those who had served in the Irish war. In the succeeding sessions, the affairs of Ireland, and chiefly with relation to the forfeitures, were brought before the Eng- lish House of Commons, and many complaints of mismanagement and embezzlement made, which, though probably well-grounded in fact, were mainly factious in their origin. Meanwhile, king William acting on a just sense of what was due to the services of those who had brought the war to a favourable termination, had disposed of a con- siderable moiety of the land to his generals. He had also attended to the demands of right, and in many cases done justice to the claims of the innocent, and of those who had been unfairly divested of their rights. The Commons, whose factious spirit gave little rest to the king, car- ried their clamours to a pitch which compelled the outraged monarch to recall his act, after it had additionally involved the difficult and delicate question in new embarrassment, as most of the grantees, im-
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 15
pressed with the precarious nature of Irish tenures, sold their grants. De Ginckle received £17,684 for his share, lord Romney £30,147, the earl of Albemarle £73,000, as appeared from subsequent investi- gations, which we shall presently notice.
In the mean time it was that Cox, as we have mentioned, was ap- pointed on the commission for the management of the forfeited lands. The strict equity with which he resisted an oppressive partiality on one side, and the urgency of menace and corruption on the other, soon drew upon him the clamorous accusations of those by whom the just forfeitures of the recent struggle were looked on as a prey, and the no less dangerous resentment of the leaders of popular feeling. It was no hard matter to raise a powerful set against him, and when every thing was decided by the movements of intrigue, his displace- ment was a matter of course. One occasion is honourably distinguished, in which an effort was made to seize on the estates of several gentle- men of the county of Galway, in defiance of the articles of the capi- tulation by which they were secured from forfeiture. Cox insisted with equal truth and force on the manifest injustice of such a viola- tion of a solemn treaty, and to the great discontent of the jobbing pack which formed the executive government in the castle, he saved the Galway gentlemen from losing their estates by an arbitrary order of council. Such an interference with the views of the Irish admin- istration was not to be endured, and he was presently superseded, on the gratuitous pretext, that the council might become a court of judi- cature, by the presence of so many judges. They covered their real design, by dismissing at the same time another judge, whose abilities were of little weight. But soon after, an effort was made to complete the manoeuvre to the destruction of Sir Richard Cox's credit with the king, by a vote that the forfeitures in Ireland were mismanaged. The effort failed, and only served to raise the reputation it was de- signed to destroy. Sir Richard defended himself against a formidable string of accusations, by statements so full, so well vouched, and so forcibly put forward, that the vote was lost. And to make the vin- dictive spirit of the whole proceeding more apparent, another method of effecting their purpose was resorted to : the commission was ob- jected to on the ground of economy, which demanded a strict and parsimonious management of the revenue, and the reduction of an expensive establishment. In defence of the private policy by which the official agency of the Irish council was at that time governed in the conduct of affairs, we have little to say. We have both in the outset of this memoir, and throughout this work, taken every occasion to enforce the distinction to be drawn between the general policy of government, or professed principles of public men or parties, and the private motives by which individuals acting in a system necessarily lax and insufficient in control, may have been led to pursue their per- sonal interests at the cost of their public trusts. We do believe, that the occasion of this commission afforded a far surer field for corrupt gain or the iniquitous decisions of private favour or enmity, than for the public advantage of the revenue. The whole transaction was based on complicated impolicy. Of the forfeitures, if we cannot admit that some portion stood upon unjust and impolitic grounds, or in contraven-
16 POLITICAL SERIES. . [FOURTH
tion of the treaties by which the adherents of James who submitted at the period of the treaty of Limerick, were suffered to retain their estates ; there was at least a protracted course of vexatious and uncertain pro- ceeding1 to ascertain the extent of the forfeited possessions, which being placed in the hands of persons who were the objects of fear and prejudice, was calculated to maintain an angry and unsettled spirit through all Ire- land. Had the commissioners acted with the most rigid equity, it is evident to every one who understands the processes of popular senti- ment, that their conduct could not escape the calumnies to which national prejudice and resentment, roused by inflictions and depriva- tions, would give rise. But the very first origin of the measure involved a most arbitrary and iniquitous usurpation on the part of the English Commons, of a power to which they had no claim. The disposition of the Irish forfeitures was the undoubted right of king William, and the usurpation of this right, an unconstitutional encroachment, was in its very intention factious, and for no purpose in the world but to thwart and embarrass the king. For the liquidation of the expenses of the war, it was so wholly inadequate, that on a distinct return which was afterwards found to have overrated the value of the lands, it was given up. The following are the chief articles of the report, and gives a fair view of the entire merits of the case, so far as the general equity of the proceedings of the commission.
The number of acres in the several counties belonging to the for- feited persons, was 1,060,792 acres. These being worth £211,623 per annum, the full value is computed at £2,685,130.* From this gross value, deductions are made for estates restored to the old pro- prietors by articles of Limerick and Galway, to the value of £724,923 ; for those restored by the king to their old possessors, £260,863; after which, with other less important deductions, the amount above stated is reduced to £1,699,343. These few items are extracted from the report of the commission in 1699? when the subject had been for several years embroiled by factions, proceeding from the partial, ignorant, or interested conduct of a commission named by the house of commons to inquire into their value, and the considerations on which they had been granted. The commissioners disagreed as to the statements of their report: the earl of Drogheda and other two gentlemen refused to sign it, on the allegation that in several particulars it was incorrect. They were accused by the popular party of having been gained by the court. The commons, heated by a high spirit of opposition, affected to be strongly impressed with the importance of saving a million and a half for the discharge of the public debts ; they bore down all oppo- sition to the report, and resolved to bring in a bill for the application of all the forfeited estates in the land, and all grants of them, from 13th February, 1688, to the use of the public. To carry this into effect, their proceedings were violent and clearly unconstitutional. When the clause which had formerly accompanied the bill was pro- posed,— that the king should dispose of a third of those lands,— it was replied by the commons, that his grantees had been already so long in possession of the lands, that the rents and profits had amounted to
* Tindal.
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 17
a third of the entire value : this assertion was merely a tyrannical stretch of reason. But so far was this arbitrary and illegal spirit carried, as to pass a vote that they would not receive petitions from any person whatever concerning the grants;* but they added to this a reso- lution, that they would take into consideration the services of their commissioners. They further resolved, that the advising, procuring, and passing these grants, had been the means of great debts to the nation, heavy taxes on the people, and reflected highly on the king's honour; and that the officers and agents employed in effecting them had failed in their duty to the public. By another resolution, this vote was presented to the king in the form of an address. We give the king's answer: — "Gentlemen, I was not only led by inclination, but thought myself obliged in justice to reward those who served well, and particularly in the reduction of Ireland, out of the estates forfeited to me by the rebellion there. The long war in which we were engaged did occasion great taxes, and has left the nation much in debt.''
Sir Richard Cox availed himself of the leisure obtained from his dis- missal from a troublesome and invidious office, to prosecute some of those numerous pursuits of study and research, with which his active mind was filled. An " Essay for the conversion of the Irish," was among the chief results. He is also said to have composed and pre- sented a memorial upon the bill then pending in the house of lords, to prohibit the exportation of Irish woollen manufactures.
In 1701, the lord chief justice of the common pleas died, and Sir Richard was promoted to his place by the king, immediately after which he obtained a seat in the privy council.
On the death of king William, he was summoned to England by Lord Methuen, to give his advice on Irish affairs, more especially with a view to the measures to be proposed for the consideration of the Irish parliament. The political views of Sir Richard were in most respects enlightened by the union of great natural sagacity, with the most extensive local and practical information. With respect to the remoter effects, and more indirect influence of civil or economical enactments or managements, he participated in the general obscurity of his time. But he had clear views of the enormous disadvantages, and obstacles to improvement and civil progress, then existing in his country, — the barbarism of a large portion of the inhabitants — the political tendency to an alien jurisdiction, consequent upon a difference of churches — the mutual dissensions arising from the same cause — the prejudices in the neighbouring island and in the seat of government, arising from these and other causes — the obstacles and impediments to Irish trade, originating in defective laws and commercial jealousies : with these and such facts strongly impressed on his mind, and a sentiment of patriotism, if not more sincere, certainly more enlightened, than the zeal (not according to knowledge) of those whose national and local passions and prejudices impelled them to redress, or avenge the half- imaginary wrongs of the country, by washing her fields in the blood of endless strife, and perpetuating the evils which they resented, and of which they were themselves mainly the cause; the advice of Sir
* Timlal. VOL. IV. li
18 POLITICAL SERIES. [FoURTH
Richard was just, as might be inferred from such knowledge, if re- ferred to the existing state of human opinion, and prudent with regard to the real wants and exigencies of the day. He presented an extensive and clear view of the national resources, local and general; he exposed the political workings among the people and the leaders of popular opinion ; the state of trade, with its advantages, and the difficulties to which it was subject. It is also probable that he cautiously laid open the prac- tice of official abuse, which then to a great extent neutralized the be- neficent intentions of the government.
Several legislative measures, afterwards passed into law, may be considered as the result of his counsel. Some of these exhibit the fears and cautions which had their foundation in the events of the previous reigns, and marked the entire policy of the day. The fears of popery, as then connected with the claims of rival families to the crown, are exemplified in an act " to prevent popish priests from com- ing into the kingdom ;" an act " to make it high treason in this king- dom (Ireland) to impeach the succession to the crown, as limited by several acts of parliament ;" an act " to prevent the further growth of popery ;" an act " for registering the popish clergy ;" and several others in the same spirit, of which one or two of the preambles will give the most authentic view of the intent and spirit, as well as of the political tendencies of the time. The first-mentioned act commences thus: — " Whereas great numbers of popish bishops, deans, friars, Jesuits, and other regulars of the popish clergy, do daily come into this kingdom from France, Spain, and other foreign parts, under the disguise or pretence of being popish secular priests, with intent to stir up her majesty's popish subjects to rebellion." From this and another act, " for registering the popish clergy," in the same year,* it seems that a distinction was made between the regular and secular priesthood of the church of Rome, the former of whom were viewed by the legisla- ture as purely political in their design and agency, while the min- istrations of the latter having only reference to the ecclesiastical and spiritual interests of the Irish, were not further contemplated by the second of these acts, than so far as was necessary to guard against the other orders, which both in the early struggles of the country, and in the recent and then yet existing machinations of the exiled family and its adherents, were undoubtedly instrumental, in a high degree, to the communications which they maintained with Ireland. This view is confirmed by the language of an act in the following year, by which the registering act is explained, and which evidently looks no further than the danger of rebellion. It is, however, evident, that a sense of such a nature in that age, when a disputed succession, turning mainly on the religion of a large class of the Irish people, who had always ma- nifested an unusual tendency to civil strife, at every call of every mover or excitement, could not fail to awaken an intense spirit of suspicion and jealousy, of which the papists themselves must needs have been the direct objects. Nor, if the facts be directly regarded, was the sense either unnatural or without its justification in the actual state of the time, or in the records of the past. And here let it be recollected
* Ir. Statutes. An. Sec. Reg. Ann.
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 19
by our readers of that communion, that we have asserted the conditions of the question to have been altered by time, and the changes of con- tinental politics; yet then the case was too plain even for the most dexterous advocacy of modern times to gloss over, without the aid of direct misstatement. Not only was there a strong and unsuppressed devotion to the Pretender, and a sentiment of national animosity sedu- lously fostered against the English and the protestants, but there was also yet remaining a strong and ardent hope on the part of the de- scendants of the ancient chiefs and toparchs of the land to regain their old possessions and barbaric control. The Pope still possessed the then expiring remains of that sway which in the middle ages was equi- valent to the monarchy of the civilized world, and the regular clergy were yet under the persuasion that Ireland, and indeed England, were to be brought again within the pale of his jurisdiction. To effect these objects, there was but one apparent course — rebellion, under whatever name, or for whatever pretext it was promoted, among a population ever prompt to rebel, and ever open to every persuasion, and credulous of every pretext. Such was the state of facts ; a mass of illusions con- sistent with the ignorance of the people, the iniquitous and turbulent projects of their leaders, and the excusable but inadmissible policy of the Romish church, constituted a case which must be regarded now as entirely exempt from the common rules of political justice, which do not contemplate such a state of things. Political freedom or equality must presume an acquiescence in the fundamental principles of the civil constitution; the maintenance of tenets, civil or ecclesiastical, which have for their object the overthrow of either the state itself, or of the existing rights of any class, or of the peace and order of the whole, must unquestionably be placed under whatever degree of con- straint may appear essential for the purpose of effectual control. To this, we presume, no answer will be attempted; and we must confess, the surprise with which we have sometimes contemplated the injudi- cious and supererogatory efforts of modern popular writers and speakers forcibly to bring the claims of the Irish papists of modern times under the . range of arguments from fact and principle, which, however they may be overlooked by a journalist or popular speaker, must ever have weight with the thoughtful and informed. These reflections are the necessary introduction to the mention of a measure which has always been described as one of peculiar hardship — the bill passed in the second year of queen Anne, for " preventing the further growth of popery;" an act which, however it may be justified in principle, is still open to more than doubt as to the prudence of its policy; a doubt which we would suggest on the strong ground, that in point of fact its severer clauses were never to any extent enforced. The act already noticed for guarding the succession, has one of its clauses to this ef- fect : — " And forasmuch as it most manifestly appears that the papists of this kingdom, and other disaffected persons, do still entertain hopes of disappointing the said succession, as the same stands limited, for prevention whereof," &c., &c. The act in question, among other matters in the preamble, states, that " many persons professing the popish religion have it in their power to raise divisions among pro- testants, by voting at elections for members of parliament, and also
20 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
have it in their power to use other ways and means, tending to the de- struction of the protestant interests in this kingdom," &e., &c. Now, if it be kept in mind how much was then known and felt to depend on the safety and integrity of the protestant interests, and if the spirit be recollected that governed the entire conduct of those members of the church of Rome, who had the ignorant populace wholly at their com- mand, the following harsh provisions will be more moderately and fairly judged of. 1st, They were forbidden to attempt to persuade protestants to renounce their church and creed. 2d,> Papists were forbidden to send their children beyond seas for education. 3d, A provision is made to secure a subsistence for such children of popish parents as should embrace the protestant religion, in such cases as the parents should fail to provide for them, and the right of inheritance is secured to the eldest son, if a protestant. 4th, The guardianship of orphans is transferred from the nearest relative of the Romish, to the next of the protestant communion. 5th, Protestants having any estate or. interest in the kingdom are forbidden to intermarry with papists. 6th, Papists are forbidden to purchase and estate in land, exceeding a lease of thirty-one years. 7th, Limits the descent of the estates of protestants to the next protestant heirs, passing over any papist who might be entitled to succeed on the demise of such possessors, unless in case of conformity within a certain specified time. 8th, Provides that the estates of papists' parents shall descend in gavelkind to their chil- dren, except in case where the eldest son should be a protestant at his father's death. These provisions are followed by others, for the pur- pose of securing their effect, by oaths and declarations. Of these one is a declaration for the purpose of ascertaining the creed, followed by an abjuration which we shall give at length, as confirmatory of the view here taken of the real intent of these enactments: —
" I A. B. do truly and sincerely acknowledge, profess, testifie, and declare, in my conscience, before God and the world, that our sove- reign lady, queen Ann, is lawful and rightful queen of this realm, and of all other her majestie's dominions and countries thereunto be- longing. And I do solemnly and sincerely declare, that I do believe in my conscience, that the person pretended to be the Prince of Wales, during the life of the late king James, and since his decease pretending to be, and taking upon himself the style and title of king of England, by the name of James III., hath not any right or title what- soever to the crown of this realm, or any other the dominions thereto be- longing; and I do renounce, refuse, and abjure, any allegiance or obedi- ence to him. And I do swear, that I will bear faith and true allegi- ance to her majesty queen Ann, and her will defend to the utmost of my power, against all traitorous conspiracies and attempts whatsoever which shall be made against her person, crown, or dignity. And I will do my best endeavour to disclose and make known to her majesty, and her successors, all treasons and traitorous conspiracies, which I shall know to be against her, or any of them. And I do faithfully promise to the utmost of my power, to support, maintain, and defend the limitation and succession of the crown, against him, the said James, and all other persons whatsoever, as the same is, and stands limited by an act, intituled, An Act declaring the rights and liberties uf
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 21
the subject, and settling the succession of the crown, to her present majesty, and the heirs of her body, being protestants ; and as the same by one other act, intituled, An Act for the further limitation of the crown, and better securing the rights and liberties of the subject, is and stands limited after the decease of her majesty, and for default of issue of her majesty, to the princess Sophia, electoress and duchess dowager of Hanover, and the heirs of her body, being protestants. And all these things I do plainly and sincerely acknowledge and swear, according to these express words by me spoken, and according to the plain and common understanding of the same words, without equivo- cation, mental evasion, or secret reservation whatsoever. And I do make this recognition, acknowledgment, adjuration, renunciation, and promise, heartily, willingly, and truly, upon the true faith of a Chris- tian. " So HELP ME GOD."
The next clause states the importance of the cities of Limerick and Galway as garrison towns — a fact well confirmed by the entire his- tory of the recent struggle — and on this view provides for their security, in case of any future outbreak of the same formidable spirit which had been laid with so much bloodshed and difficulty, by prohibiting the settlement there of any persons of the Romish communion after the 25th of March, 1703, and by exacting a security for the peaceable demeanour of those who were actual residents. This clause is described by a very clever, and not generally uncandid historian of the present day, with a recklessness of assertion not easily accounted for, even by that writer's extreme party principles, — a violation of the treaties of Limerick and Galway. The assertion is mischievous, as well as unfounded upon any clause or stipulation in either of those treaties. We are of opinion that the fears of the loyalists of that day, and the still more warrant- able fears of the English and the commercial inhabitants of this island, contained some exaggeration: such is human feeling. We also think that the consequences of legislation, founded on the prepossessions of fear, were unfortunate; but taking as the true, and only true ground of a just appreciation of the equity of that entire system of harsh enact- ment, we feel bound to insist that it was all unanswerably justified by the whole history of the previous century. If this indeed were not the case, — if our English ancestors, to whom Ireland owes whatever she possesses of prosperity, had really, as Mr Taylor would represent, first robbed and then enslaved, — there is now no wise or humane ob- ject in insisting on the fact, or endeavouring to keep alive resentment and vindictive recollection; the wisdom, if not the sincerity, may surely be doubted, which for the service of party, would thus appeal to the very passions which have been the efficient and proximate causes of all the sufferings of unhappy Ireland. To what purpose can it be to tell the Irish people, (were it not an unwarrantable falsehood,) that they have been the victims of every wrong, but to excite that spirit of mistaken re- taliation, which has ever, and will ever, recoil upon themselves. If they really were plundered, will the descendants of the plunderer be so gra- tuitously generous as to make restitution now, in the tenth generation ? If they were oppressed, are their descendants to stretch the preroga- tive of Divine vengeance, and visit the sins of the fathers beyond the
22 , POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
third or fourth generation? If this were justified, in fact, what would be the consequence ? Such justice will never be obtained while a hand can be lifted to resist : and those who falsify history to preach ven- geance, would soon become witnesses to the reality which they so heedlessly overlook in the zeal of their patriotism, and be forced to acknowledge the neglected truth, that it is to such patriots and such a spirit, that Ireland owes all her sufferings. If she is never to know peace, or to attain civil progress, until the results of seven or eight centuries (results ever forgotten in the history of other nations) shall be reversed: she is then alone among nations doomed to a perpetual reproach and curse. These reflections are not designed to vindicate anything, or, on the other hand, to depreciate anything practicable for the advantage even of a party; but we would suggest, that the claims of justice and policy may be better preferred on their actual grounds, either in equity or expediency, than on irritating and false statements of the past.
This severe enactment was plainly suggested by the fear and pru- dence of the time. It was the direct inference from the history of centuries, and then enforced by events and political workings, fresh in the memory of all. If these facts have happily now no existence, if the Pretender is no more, if the papal supremacy has expired, if the old insurgent temper of the Irish populace has yielded to the influence of growing civilization, if their priesthood has ceased to be a political instrument in the hands of foreign potentates, if the race of old families, once the despots of the soil, have melted into the pacific waters of industry and civilization — why, then, surely this island is mature for a full participation in every right and blessing that equal laws and regulated liberty can give. There is no need for the imprudent and calumnious assumption of a different state of things, which, if it still existed, would render their claims most doubtful. Is it not unjust to give up the whole force of advocacy, by confounding the people of to-day with those of a hundred years ago? Why will the writers of the radical press wrong the people, and stultify themselves by facts which can be contradicted, and reasons which have no force, but to irritate the passions, and endanger the peace and safety of the peasantry, who are the only persons deceived? We should advocate the cause of Ireland on other grounds, and in a different strain. But we are hurried out of our course, by the party representations of writers, into whose works we have been compelled or induced to look. It is more to the purpose, to observe here, that the provisions of the statute thus questioned, contain much to be deeply regretted, as being severe for a purpose not to be attained by severities. The object to be then legitimately pursued, was the effectual control of classes which were actuated by an unsafe spirit ; and no means essential to the purpose were superfluous. But with this essential policy, there mingled a considerable and fatal error: it was judged by the inexperienced sim- plicity of our ancestors, that Romanism itself, to which so many dis- asters seemed traceable, might be gradually worn out and extinguished by legislative enactments, which were not in fact designed for oppres- sion, but as imposing a motive for what Sir Richard Cox would call " the conversion of the Irish," it was, they thought, free to every man
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 23
to exchange a church which they held to be erroneous, for one which they held to be founded in divine truth; and if their notion was just, none could suffer by the change. They had no ill will to papists as men, but erroneously fancied that popery could be put down by penal- ties. In this they betrayed some ignorance of human nature, as well as of ecclesiastical history; and we are free to admit that the great sup- port of Romanism in Ireland, has been the strength derived from the political character, and scope of influence thus infused into it. It is one of the unhappy conditions of fallen human nature, to be cold enough about religion as referrible to its real and only just principles, as ex- pressed in the " first and great commandment," and the second, which " is like unto it." But for one who will love God or man, there are ten thousand who will joyfully fight in his name: when a spiritual principle is lowered into a vehicle for discontent, adventure, anger, or mere excitement of any kind, it gathers fire fast enough. It is indeed easier to wield or bear the faggot and brand, than to bear the common humiliations of the Christian walk, or to serve in peace. Such is man in every age and nation. And locking thus on the very justifiable fear and precaution of our forefathers, we think that it was unfortunate to plant, so deeply as they did, the roots of such a tree. The most anxious care, we believe, should be preserved, so far as may be, to keep a clear line between politics and religious tenets; we say, so far as may be, for it is not possible to exclude the consideration when the political and religious tenets happen to be one : a difficulty, — in some degree lessened by the fact, that the individual is not altogether to be identified with the church to which he belongs ; for, if no stronger tie than the spiritual tie shall have been forcibly woven, most laymen are held but feebly by the bonds of mere ecclesiastical control. It is also not nearly so light a matter as it may be thought at first view, to take up a ground liable to misrepresentations of so dangerous a character as the charge of religious oppression. Whatever the occasion may chance to be, the rallying point of popular clamour will be some venerable name : for in the whole scope of error there is no admitted plea but truth and right. The most stringent system of civil control, directed against acts or conduct, is less liable to resistance of a dan- gerous kind, and far more transitory in its after-workings, than the lightest, which places resistance under the sanction of a sacred pretext, and the guidance of spiritual policy.
The papists asked leave to be heard by their counsel against this bill ; and the desired permission was granted. Sir Theobald Butler, Messrs Malone, and Rice, attended, and exerted considerable eloquence and ability. They pleaded the treaty of Limerick, which their hearers considered as mere advocacy. They also urged the meritorious con- duct of the papists since their last submission ; but the argument was surely rather premature — the bloody experiment of insurrection will seldom be tried twice in the same generation. With more truth But- ler dwelt on the danger of sowing strife between parents and children; and the truth was felt as a dreadful necessity. It only re- mains to add here, that this law was from the commencement ineffective. The provisions of real hardship, which affected property, and in some measure tended to injure the authority of parents, were easily eluded
24 POLITICAL SERIES. FFouRTH
by conveyances and incumbrances, and the whole resources of legal fiction and contrivance. The magistrates, in most instances, refused to perform their part in enforcing a law revolting to the pride, and prejudicial to the interests of those gentlemen, with whom, in the intercourse of private life, they were wont to live on terms of friend- ship and respect. The Irish parliament, it is true, made repeated efforts to enforce its laws; and in March, 1705, they passed a vote, " that all magistrates, and other persons whatsoever, who neglected or omitted to put the penal laws into due execution, were betrayers of the liberties of the kingdom." In 1709? an act for the further enforce- ment of this was passed, which demands no additional comment here, save that, while it enforced its essential provisions, it also so regulated and limited its operation, as to lessen the pernicious effects. We shall have, unfortunately, other occasions to revert to this topic, which pre- sents the great stumbling-block to Irish history. It still continues to separate into two irreconcilable sytems, the opinions, and even the records of the two great sections into which the intelligence of this country is divided. We shall have conducted our own statements with little skill indeed, if those who think with either, unless with un- usual moderation, will consent to reckon us among their parties. On party questions we have already stated trjily, and more than once, our principle, — the nature of which is to exclude general reproach from all those great sections of society, who, acting sincerely on the prin- ciples they hold for true and just, or the interests by which they are con- nected, have looked on each other's opinions not only with rational dis- sent, but even with aversion and prejudice, and in the conflict of long contention and recrimination, have inculpated each other with more ac- cusation and calumny, (true and false,) and obscured each other's whole history with more animosity than the ordinary powers of human reason can avail to remove, correct, and enlighten. In this we pledge our- selves to no particular view of any question ; but simply mean to assert, and, so far as in us lies, maintain the assertion, that the public desires and demands of the great aggregate of all public bodies, are always honest, and founded on their notions of right and justice. These are, mostly on all sides, largely alloyed with fallacies of every kind; but the bad passions which such oppositions must on both sides call into being, are far the worst, because the most permanent of the evils they produce. And whatever may have been the wrongs, oppressions, or murders and robberies committed on either side, by those unprincipled individuals never wanting to any — their mischief would, like all the real results of this transitory world, die with the actors and sufferers, and produce no effect upon the aftertime, were they not kept alive by the advocacy of party; so that every generation is successively inflamed by the firebrand kindled in the pile of ancient animosities. The story of the phoenix rising regenerated from the ancestral nest, has no stronger type in reality than the hell-kite of dissension, which preys on the peace of this country. But once more, we must refrain: the time is not yet ripe for the one truth, deeply reproachful as it is to all who have sought the good of the country, loving her prosperity " not wisely, but too well." The whole of her sufferings are the result of protracted dis- sension : tho combatants, when they pause to look at stained and tram-
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD COX. 25
pled ground, the broken walls, and the air surcharged with the dust of conflict, may point to the dismal scene, and accuse each other as authors of the ruin wrought by their mutual madness.*
It is more pleasing to the historian to turn from the gloom of such considerations, to the efforts of more enlightened policy for the facili- tation of trade. A disordered state of public feeling, the vast uncer- tainty of peace, and the want of encouragement from the ascendant power of England, presented serious obstacles to a commerce so for- tunate in its natural resources, that even these disadvantages could not prevent it from making a considerable start in advance, whenever there was a breathing time from civil fury. The obstacles which re- sulted from an uncertain state of property, and still more from the feebleness and defectiveness of the law, presented a more constant pressure, and were less capable of being remedied by any occasional measure or individual resistance; they operated not so much by direct interference, as by the influence they had in enfeebling the vital functions of trade by the effect which they had on public credit. To remedy this disadvantage, few laws were made, because the eye of the government was diverted from the ordinary processes of civil life, by the violent and disordered processes which affected the whole state of the land, in which no member performed its proper office, or moved in its proper place. An act "for quieting posses- sions, and disposing of undisposed and plus acres," was among the most useful and judicious enactments planned on the same occa- sion. In the preamble of this act, several statements are incidentally made, which throw some light on the policy of the government, and the state of the country. The introductory sentences state, that " Whereas it will very much tend to the prosperity of this kingdom, which hath been ruined by the frequent rebellions of Irish papists, and to the interests of your majesty's revenue, that your good subjects be quieted in their possessions, and encouraged to plant and improve the country." For the purpose of this encouragement, so essential to the advance of Irish prosperity, two main provisions are contained in this act, — viz., the disposal of certain residual denominations of lands, of which the principal part had already been granted, or otherwise dis- posed of. These portions, called plus acres, were now to be " vested in such person, or persons, who, on the 1st day of October, 1702, were in the possession of such plus acres, by themselves, their tenants, &c.," to be enjoyed by them and their heirs for ever, liable to such quitrent as was payable out of the other portions of the same deno- minations already vested. And by the following clause, to terminate all disputes about the possession of such land, a power was vested in the lord- lieutenant and six of the privy council, within three years to hear, and finally determine, all claims to their possession. The act goes on to state the fact, that there still continued to be large tracts of the same class of lands undisposed of; for the most part so sterile as
* How far the principle here enforced is capable of any practical application is a question of a different kind, and not within our province. Rights, whether real or imaginary, will not he relinquished for the good of mankind; andtruth, if sacred, ought not, for any earthly consideration. But it is the more incumbent on those who agitate the world, to weigh well the tenets they support and propagate.
26 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
not to be worth any quitrent, " and therefore remains desolate and uninhabited, but are a receptacle for thieves, robbers, and tories, to the great detriment of the country, and delay of her majesty's revenue." On these considerations, a power is similarly given to the lord-lieu- tenant, &c., as before, to grant those lands to protestants, for reason- able rents, and such terms of years as they might see fit. Still more to the purpose declared in the preamble, is the first clause of the next following chapter of the act, which confirms every estate vested in pur- suance of the acts of settlement and explanation, in the last reign, to be held free from all liabilities and exceptions contained in the provi- sions of that act, and in future barring all claimants who had not hitherto brought their actions, by the full and final extinction of their pretended rights.*
An advantage of at least equal importance to the trade of this king- dom was the act for recovery of small debts, &c., attributable entirely to the judicious advice of Sir Richard Cox. He also obtained an act of the English parliament, allowing the exportation of Irish linen direct to the colonies.
The effect of his visit to England was to make the character and distinguished abilities of Cox more thoroughly known and appreciated ; and Mr Methuen, the Irish chancellor, having been sent ambassador to Portugal, Cox was raised to that high office.
In 1 705, Sir Richard was appointed lord-justice, together with lord Cutts, the duke of Ormonde being at the time lord-lieutenant. The Jacobite principles of this nobleman were fully understood, and there was entertained among the members of the Irish administration an anxious wish for his removal. The reader is aware that on both sides of the water there was at this time a powerful though latent collision of the two great antagonist parties on the subject of the succession. It was universally felt that the queen and court party were secretly favourable to the Pretender, and that all the great leaders of the court party kept up a private correspondence with that unfortunate family. Among these, some, as Marlborough, Harley, &c., were simply desir- ous to keep themselves well with either side, and had a sincere desire to preserve the act of settlement as limited by the act of succession. Others, among whom St John with the duke of Ormonde were the chief, were more sincere in their political zeal for the exile. The Jacobites were of course preferred to place and power; and during this reign there was a general disposition of the administrative arrange- ments for the purposes of that party. This was carried to as great a height as the strong and universal sense of the British public admitted, so that there is abundant proof that the most of the court measures and appointments were dictated by James, or by his authorized agents in London. Ireland was, as ever, the rallying point of expectation ; the devoted tenacity of the popular affections, the influence of the Roman See, the over-mastery of the thoroughly diffused agency of the regular clergy, and the general, and indeed natural, bias of a prevail- ing creed, which by its very institution was political, and which a stringent control imbittered; all these considerations, of which the
* Ir. Statutes, 2 Anne Reg. c. ix.
PERIOD.] SIR RICHARD cox. 27
most prominent had already made Ireland the stage of a desolating conflict, now made it the scene of an important byplay of party. Under these circumstances, it is not improbable that there were seve- ral strong currents of public feeling against the person and conduct of the duke of Ormonde. In spite of the popularity of his very name and title, it was in effect difficult for him long to continue in favour with any. Compelled by circumstances to pursue a line of conduct which deprived him of the regard of the Irish party, his real temper and private views were too well known to be trusted by the English. The British cabinet, reluctantly hurried along by the strong zeal of the whig party, which then occupied the position and politics of the modern conservative, the measures of the administration were for the most part in conformity with the great protestant feeling in England, and the duke was directed to " prevent the growth of popery." To this effect he had pledged himself, and he kept his promise. From the state of feeling already described as secretly governing the administration of affairs, we should be inclined to infer that numerous under-currents of fear, suspicion, doubt, and intrigue, of which we have before us no direct evidence, then strongly agitated the minds of political men, and led to demonstrations not now precisely to be explained. The duke was, we doubt not, at the time sincere in his profession of political faith, though after-circumstances show that his mind was working round to the strong bias of the court. If the inference should yet be premature, still the anti-Jacobite zeal of the English people, and of the protestant party in Ireland, exasperated by a just suspicion of the court party, was not easily satisfied. The distinction of whig and tory became at this time prevalent in Ireland, and with it, it is probable, that the violent party feelings connected with it were also imported — from which our inference derives additional probability. Whatever were the duke's opinions, he must have at the time begun to be an object of jealous observation. And if it be said that the decision of his conduct was sufficient to exempt him from doubt, yet it is to be observed that for this he had the less credit with the whig party, as he was known to have, from carelessness and facility of character, so entangled himself in the discharge of his public trusts, as to be much in the power of the leaders of that party. Whatever were the causes, after the duke's recall to England, the feeling of the council against his continuing to hold the vice-regal office, began to show itself strongly. Lord Cutts, with Sir Richard Cox, were on this occasion appointed lordsrjustices. Cutts died, and an effort was made by some of the Irish council to per- suade Sir Richard to issue writs to the council to elect a governor ; by this means hoping that the duke might be superseded tacitly. To ren- der this proposal more persuasive, it is asserted that it was suggested to Sir Richard that he would be the person on whom the choice of the council would fall. He was too experienced and sagacious to be circum- vented by such an artifice, and repelled the temptation. An old statute of Henry VIII. was proposed as the authority for this proposal : Sir Richard explained that this statute was but a provision for the absence of the chief magistrate of the kingdom. The councillors urged, and Sir Richard consulted his learned brethren, the judges and law officers of the crown, who coincided in his view, to which, thus confirmed, he
28 POLITICAL SERIES. [FounTH
adhered, to the no small vexation of those who had endeavoured to urge him on the opposite course.
In April, 1707, the duke of Ormonde was removed, and the earl of Pembroke was appointed in his room. There seems, at the moment, to have been a strong doubt among Sir Richard's friends as to the consequences of the change as regarded himself. But on the follow- ing June, he found himself under the necessity of resigning the seals to the lord-lieutenant, who took them with an assurance that he would not have received them but with the design of adequate compensation. Sir Richard was aware of the active enmity to which both his recent con- duct and his known politics had exposed him, and he felt that he must not expect to pass free from its effects ; but with the natural firmness of his manly character, he resolved to face his enemies, and trust to the integrity of his entire conduct and character. His country affairs had been for some time calling for his presence, and he had been pre- paring to leave town; but, considering the construction which politi- cal animosity is always prepared to fasten on the most indifferent ac- tions, he resolved to stand his ground, and brave the inquiry which he knew his enemies would soon set on foot. On this point he was not kept in suspense: numerous accusations were brought againt him; all of which he answered so fully and ably, as they followed each other, that the malevolence of his accusers was confounded, and their perse- verance wearied.
On the death of queen Anne, Sir Richard retired from public life. In April, 1733, he was seized with an apoplectic attack, of which he died in the following month, at the age of eighty-three. He was endowed with many personal advantages, and many great qualifications for the professional career in which he rose to eminence, as well as for litera- ture, such as it was in Ireland in his day. His historical work is well known, and has been largely used in the former parts of this work. His zeal, as a Protestant writer, is such as to render him liable to the charge of partiality; but he cannot be fairly charged with misrepre- sentation; and they who would make the charge, would do well to weigh his statements taken with their foundation in fact and gen- eral consistency, compared with the unmeasured and angry statements of the writers who may be regarded as his antagonists. His zeal is to be accounted for creditably, by the actual state of Ireland through his long life ; and if we make many abatements on the score of fear and error, still, to estimate mens' conduct justly, we have no right to demand superhuman penetration, that looks beyond the present proba- bilities and appearances, and measures opposition by the philosophical standard of a political canon, which, in the middle of the 19th century, has not yet been ascertained.
SHilliam
BORN A.D. 1656— DIED A.D. 1698.
THE name of Mr William Molyneux is in several ways distinguished. He is eminently entitled to a high place among the few Irishmen of
PERIOD.] WILLIAM MOLYNEUX. 29
his day who can claim the distinction of philosophy, and might well grace the literary branch of this work; but there are considerations which make it expedient and fit that we should rather assign him a place in his lower but more known character of a politician, and a public man ; a position which his celebrated pamphlet renders not in- appropriate. And the reader has already been apprized of the neces- sity under which we are placed, to avail ourselves of every name at our disposal, for the purpose of completing the summary sketch which we are bound to give of the remainder of this long period.
William Molyneux was descended from a line distinguished by lite- rary and scientific talent. His grandfather was Ulster king-at-arms, and is mentioned by Sir James Ware with eulogy, as " venerandce antiquitatis cultor" He wrote a continuation of Hanmer's Chronicle of Ireland, which was not however published entire. His father, Samuel, was Master Gunner of Ireland, and wrote a practical treatise on Projectiles; he held a lucrative office also in the Court of Ex- chequer, and was much respected by the better classes of society in Dublin.
William was born in Dublin, April 17th, 1656. His health was weak; and, as he grew up, he appeared to have so tender a frame, that it was judged inexpedient to send him to a public school. A private tutor was therefore retained, and he was educated at his father's house till his 15th year, when he entered the university of Dublin, under the tuition of Mr Palliser, then a fellow, and afterwards Arch- bishop of Cashel. In the university, he obtained all the distinction then to be acquired by proficiency in the branches of learning then taught ; and, having taken his Bachelor's degree, he proceeded to London, where he entered his name in the Middle Temple in 1675. At the Temple he continued for three years in the diligent study of the law. He did not, however, neglect his academic acquirements ; and the ma- thematical and physical sciences, which were at that time begin- ning to advance, and had received a mighty impulse from the discov- eries of the day, and the labours of several members of the Royal So- ciety, among whom Newton, then in the commencement of his illus- trious career, so won upon his philosophical and inquiring temper, that he was led to abandon his first selection of a profession, which, however attractive to the intellectual taste, is yet unfavourable to sci- entific pursuit. With this view, he returned to live in his native city in 1678, and soon after married Miss Lucy Domville, daughter of Sir William Domville, the attorney-general for Ireland. He quickly entered upon a course of scientific inquiry ; and, feeling the strong attraction of astronomy, in which the most important branches yet remained as questions to exercise the ingenuity and anxious research of the ablest heads in Europe, he devoted himself for a time to this attractive sci- ence with the whole ardour of his mind. On this subject, in 1681, he commenced a correspondence with Flamsted, which was kept up for many years.
In 1683, he exerted himself for the establishment in Dublin of a Philosophical Society, on the plan of the Royal Society, of which he had witnessed the admirable effects in London. This society had been created in 1645, by the influence and efforts of Wren, Wallis, and other
30 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
eminent men, and afterwards became a centre to the efforts of experi- mental inquiry, to which the genius of Galileo had given an impulse, and Bacon a direction; and which was in this period so largely ad- vanced by our countryman Boyle, under whose name we shall have to detail at length the history of this institution, and of those branches of human knowledge, to the cultivation of which it was mainly instrumental. To establish such an institution in Dublin, was to ad- vance indeed a wide step upon the obscure domains of intellectual night; nor, since the foundation of the university of Dublin, had there been attempted a project which, if duly encouraged, would have been so widely beneficial to Ireland. Such was the enlightened and patri- otic design of Molyneux, who was zealously joined by Sir William Petty and other eminent persons. Sir William Petty accepted the office of president, and Molyneux himself that of secretary. This in- stitution, which in Dublin may, perhaps, at that period, be considered as premature, was not, in the strong collision of party, and the absorp- tion of political passion, likely to be allowed a very distinguished or enduring existence; yet it became, like all such laudable efforts, the parent of others. It was productive of less doubtful benefit to the for- tune of Molyneux, whose reputation it largely extended, and thus became the means of his introduction to that great man, the patron of every person or institution likely to promote the good of his country — James the first duke of Ormonde. By this illustrious nobleman, then lord-lieutenant of Ireland, Molyneux was, with Sir William Robinson, appointed surveyor of the king's buildings and works, and chief en- gineer.
In 1685, he had the honour of being elected a fellow of the Royal Society, to the transactions of which he became largely a contributor: many papers of his are to be found in the several volumes from the fourteenth to the twenty-ninth. The same year he also obtained an appointment to survey the fortresses on the Flemish coast, with a view to perfect his knowledge of the art of engineering. He took occasion to extend his travels through Holland and Germany ; and, as he carried letters from his friend Flamsted to Cassini and other distinguished professors, he had the happiness to meet and converse with the most distinguished astronomers in Europe.
From these incidents, it may be imagined that his earliest produc- tions were likely to be decided by the prevailing taste of his mind and character of his studies. On his return to Dublin, in 1686, he pub- lished an account of a telescope dial invented by himself. This ac- count was republished in London in 1700.
On the publication of Newton's " Principia," in the following year, Molyneux received the sheets as they were printed, from Halley. He expressed his admiration and astonishment at that wonderful produc- tion of intellectual power, till then perhaps unequalled in the progress of human knowledge. He at the same time confessed the difficulty which, in common with many eminent mathematicians of that period, he found in the perfect understanding of its contents.
The calm pursuits of philosophy were not likely to continue long in the turbulent atmosphere of an Irish metropolis. The storms of civil dissension, never long dormant, in 1688 began with fresh fury to dis-
PERIOD.] WILLIAM MOLYNEUX. 31
turb the unquiet population, and agitate the timid and peaceful with well-grounded terrors. The desolating series of events which we have related under the head of Tyrconnel, set fully in, and continued until terminated by a reaction still more deadly and fearful. The Philo- sophical Society was thus dispersed, and its members mostly compelled to escape from the fiery and terrible persecution which raged against the protestants. Molyneux removed to Chester, where he occupied himself in the composition of a work on Dioptrics, for which he had been for s*ome time collecting facts, and perhaps making experiments. We have not seen this work, but think it most probably rather an at- tempt to imbody, in a systematic form, the knowledge then existing, than containing any addition of his own. Mathematical historians at least make no mention of the labours of Mr Molyneux. The mention of such works may therefore be regarded merely as indications of the habits and intellectual character of the author. The skill and know- ledge, however, thus exerted, must then have been very considerable, and the publication of such a work must have been thought important, as Flamsted gave his assistance in the arrangement of the matter, and Halley revised the proofs, and, at the author's request, inserted a well- known theorem of his own.*
During this residence at Chester, he had the affliction of losing his • wife, who died there, leaving him one son. After the Revolution of 1689, he returned to Dublin, and was soon after elected member of parliament for Dublin. In 1695, he was again elected for the uni- versity, where he received the degree of Doctor of Laws. He con- tinued to represent the same distinguished constituency, the first per- haps existing in any representative government, during the rest of his life ; a fact which might alone entitle him to the reputation of worth, ability, and learning.
He was soon after nominated by the lord-lieutenant as one of the commissioners for forfeited estates, with a salary of £500 a-year. But the task was neither suited to his tastes nor feelings : he was indifferent about money, and quickly resigned a laborious and highly invidious and unpopular office.
But the event of his life which has conferred an historical interest upon his name, and which forms our reason for bringing him forward at this period of our writing, was the publication of his pamphlet, published in 1698, and entitled, " The Case of Ireland, being bound by acts of parliament in England, stated."f This essay was occa- sioned by a discussion then in progress in the English parliament, to prohibit the exportation of Irish woollen manufactures, It derives much historical importance from the consideration, that it was the beginning of a struggle for the independence of the Irish legislature, renewed at several periods, and leading eventually to interesting con- sequences.
The argument of Molyneux contains no main point on which we have
* Dr Halley invented a general algebraical theorem, to find the foci of optic glasses ; but we believe the theorem adverted to here, is a geometrical construction for finding the foci of rays diverging from, or converging to, a given point in the axis of a spherical lens, under certain conditions.
f Title of the edition published in 1773.
32 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
not already had to express some opinion. With the inference of Mr Molyneux we concur; but we take this occasion to express, and this argument to illustrate our strong dislike to the mischievous fallacy of that sort of political metaphysics to which he thinks it necessary to resort, for the proof of a plain matter of fact. We freely admit, that there are certain abstract principles involved in the history and gene- ral facts of the social state, to investigate which wTould demand the genius of a philosopher, and to apply them truly, the sagacity of a statesman. But it is to the inverse method of a priori reasoning, which begins by assumptions of states of society which never had ex- istence, and first principles, which though they may be true in fact, are, as assumptions, quite gratuitous, that we must object as the fertile resources of the political sophist on every side of every question that can be raised. In the perfection of the Eternal Mind, we freely grant there may be certain immutable first principles, independent of the constitution of things, from which, if once known, all truth might be inferentially evolved ; but we deny the competence of the authority by which a large class of writers have affirmed such principles, moral or social, independently of positive laws. Human rights are never, in fact, established in such assumptions, having in every real instance, a twofold basis fully adequate to their support; those positive laws and defined principles of right clearly promulgated in the express law of God, together with that expediency which has essentially governed social institutions: when we hear of original "rights," not derived from these, we ask for the charter. But to proceed to our author: the intent and principal heads of this argument may be best stated in his own words. They are as follows: —
" First, How Ireland became a kingdom annexed to the crown of England. And here we shall at large give a faithful narrative of the first expedition of the Britons into this country, and king Henry II.'s arrival here, such as our best historians give us.
" Secondly, We shall inquire, whether this expedition, and the Eng- lish settlement that afterwards followed thereon, can properly be called a conquest? or whether any victories obtained by the English in any succeeding ages in this kingdom, upon any rebellion, may be called a conquest thereof ?
" Thirdly, Granting that it were a conquest, we shall inquire what title a conquest gives.
" Fourthly, We shall inquire what concessions have been from time to time made to Ireland, to take off what even the most rigorous as- serters of a conqueror's title do pretend to. And herein we shall show by what degrees the English form of government, and the English statute-laws, came to be received among us ; and this shall appear to be wholly by the consent of the people and Parliament of Ireland.
" Fifthly, We shall inquire into the precedents and opinions of the learned in the laws relating to this matter, with observations thereon.
" Sixthly, We shall consider the reasons and arguments that may be farther offered on one side and t'other ; and we shall draw some gen- eral conclusions from the whole."
Before making any comment on the conduct of this argument by Molyneux, it is necessary to prevent any mistake respecting our de-
PERIOD.] WILLIAM MOLYNEUX. 33
sign by anticipating an ulterior step, so far as to say, that in our simple judgment, the first point — "how Ireland became a kingdom annexed to the crown of England'* — is, for the present view, of no im- portance whatever. In the interpretation of a verbal document, it may be most essentially necessary to discover the intent by such a refer- ence to causes and previous acts: but we do not think that the method by which any political power has been primitively derived, can affect any question as to its extent, beyond the first consequent settlement which defines and converts that power into a civil system of government, to which all subsequent questions of right and authority must be re- ferred. Until this takes place, the law of force prevails — a law which involves no other; — so long as mere conquest is the power, unwilling subjection to control is implied, and resistance a right. It is a ques- tion of strength, and admits of the natural balance of action and reac- tion ; but so soon as a settled order of civil government is fixed with the consent of the conquered, (for without consent, they cannot refer to the settlement for rights,) the rights and wrongs of conquests are from that moment at an end. We shall quickly revert to this point. But thus far we consider a necessary preface to the affirmation, that we consider the argument altogether fallacious, by which Molyneux attempts to prove the point that Ireland was not conquered.
Ireland became first subject to England, by that species of armed occupation by which other nations have, in different periods of time, changed their population and government. This occupation was at- tended by all the ordinary circumstances of such invasions ; but limited by the facts, that — 1st, The political situation of Henry II. compelled him to proceed for a time by simply giving license to the military spirit of his barons: 2d, By the cession of the native chiefs, which necessarily terminated the progress of hostilities. These conditions, so far as they go, are conquest to all intents; that part of the author's definition which affirms that there must be resistance, is an unwar- ranted assumption. The question then becomes, first, how far the com- bined circumstances of force and cession went at the same time? Be- yond this point — that is, if any still held out by force — the question would arise, by what means or under what conditions they yielded?
Mr Molyneux states, and we see no reason to dissent from his state- ment— " I doubt not but the barbarous people of Ireland at that time were struck with fear and terror of king Henry's powerful force which he brought with him ; but still their easy and voluntary submissions exempt them from the consequences of a hostile conquest, whatever they are : where there is no opposition, such a conquest can take no place"
Now, in this paragraph, we must contend the entire essential part of conquest by force, is actually admitted; but of the words in italic character, part is nugatory and part absurd. It involves the absurd supposition, that a conquering expedition is like a cricket-match or a boat-race, for the mere trial of strength, and without any design of subjection or occupation. By yielding in time, bloodshed is averted; but before any further consequence is said to be prevented, it may be asked, in such case, what can be said to be yielded, and what is meant by " voluntary submission?" Surely nothing at all, if not that which the invader demands or is content to take. And this, whatever it
VOL. iv. c
34 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
is, has been yielded to superior force. It is the submission of fear or conscious weakness, and can have no other source; for right is out of the question, until it has been established either by force or con- sent. We cannot see what additional right, bloodshed, and the slaughter and spoliation so often an attendant circumstance of con- quest, would have given.
In his discussion of this case, Molyneux refers to that of England; it was ( as he aimed it) an ingenious application of the argumentum ad hominem. " I believe/' he says, " the people of England would take it very ill to be thought a conquered nation, in the sense that some impose it on Ireland; and yet we find the same argument in the one case as in the other, if the argument from the king's style of con- questor prevail." Considering the strong intellect of Molyneux, the comparison seems more like a jest than an argument. Unhappily for the argument, it must be admitted that England was conquered by William. Whether the manner or the immediate consequences be regarded, it is impossible for a conquest to be more complete. The country was invaded by a large force, and was taken possession of by the invader; the native government was set aside, the natives sub- jected, and the lands seized. The submission of the Saxons was al- lowed, for obvious reasons, to take the appearance of a voluntary sub- mission; but the- contrary was understood on both sides. The battle of Hastings was the conquest of England.
Turning from this nugatory question to the third and essential step of Molyneux, viz.: — "what title a conquest gives," it offers no diffi' culty. We have no objection to his conclusion, although we think it complicated with some considerations not of much importance to the argument; — as, for instance, the justice or injustice of the conquest, which we must observe in passing, cannot have any practical effect on the result, or be afterwards taken into account in any scale of right below that which weighs the strength of nations in the field of battle. Supposing a conquest to be made and completely terminated by the formal (for no more is essential to the argument) submission of the governing authorities and chief inhabitants, who have any power to resist, the practical question is then, what title is thus conveyed to the conqueror; and how this title is bounded by other considerations of right?
The title is nothing more or less than occupation by force. It would be a waste of time and space to inquire by what law or what jurisdic- tion such an occupation can be strictly declared illegal. It may, in the first act, according to certain general principles of equity, derived from the positive laws of God and man, be unjust, barbarous, and cruel, but these rules have no direct application, beyond the first acquisition ; and the only jurisdiction which has any competency on the subject, is the opinion of civilized nations, which have, in our own civilized times, admitted certain conventional rules of conduct, which constitute the actual law of nations, and are, nevertheless, broken whenever it is found expedient. This is indeed, to be deprecated and deplored ; but we must not be misled, even by our sense of right. Such laws of opinion had no existence in that primitive time, when, among other barbarous characteristics, the law of force was the law of right all over the world.
PERIOD.] WILLIAM MOLYNEUX. 35
To constitute a LAW, there must be a sanction and a tribunal. But we waste our words ; the right of all conquest is consent implied, the submission of the conquered. This rule is more for their benefit and protection than for the advantage of the conqueror; for without this saving condition, conquest would be compelled to proceed to extermina- tion. Affirming, on these grounds, the full title of the conqueror, we may quote Molyneux for the point.
" First. — 'Tis plain he gets by his conquest no power over those who conquered with him; they that fought on his side, whether as private soldiers or commanders, cannot suffer by the conquest, but must, at least, be as much freemen as they were before. If any lost their free- dom by the Norman conquest, (supposing king William I. had right to invade England,) it was only the Saxons and Britons, and not the Normans, that conquered with him. In like manner, supposing Henry II. had a right to invade this island, and that he had been opposed therein by the inhabitants, it was only the ancient race of the Irish that could suffer by this subjugation; the English and Britons that came over and conquered with him, retained all the freedoms and im- munities of free-born subjects; they nor their descendants could not in reason lose these for being successful and victorious ; for so the state of both conquerors and conquered shall be equally slavish. Now, 'tis manifest that the great body of the present people of Ireland are the progeny of English and Britons, that from time to time have come over into this kingdom, and there remains but a mere handful of the ancient Irish at this day; — I may say not one in a thousand; so that if I, or any body else, claim the like freedoms with the natural born subjects of England, as being descended from them, it will be impossible to prove the contrary. I conclude, therefore, that a, just conqueror gets no power, but only over those who have actually as- sisted in that unjust force that is used against him.
" And as those that joined with the conqueror in a just invasion, have lost no right by the conquest, so neither have those of the country who opposed him not. This seems so reasonable at first proposal, that it wants little proof. All that gives title in a just conquest, is the op- posers using brutal force, and quitting the law of reason, and using the law of violence, whereby the conqueror is entitled to use him as a beast; that is, kill and enslave him." The argument of this paragraph is, in our view, wholly inconsequent.
" Secondly. — Let us consider what that power is which a rightful conqueror has over the subdued opposers, and this, we shall find, ex- tends little farther than over their lives; for how far it extends to their estates, and that it extends not at all to deprive their posterity of the freedoms and immunities to which all mankind have a right, I shall show presently. That the just conqueror has an absolute power over the lives and liberties of the conquered, appears from hence, — because the conquered, by putting themselves in a state of war, by using an unjust force, have thereby forfeited their lives. For, quitting reason, (which is the rule between man and man,) and using force, (which is the way of beasts,) they become liable to be destroyed by him against whom they use force, as any savage wild beast that is dangerous to his being.
36 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
" And this is the case of rebels in a settled commonwealth, who for- feit their lives on this account; but as to forfeiting their estates, it de- pends on the municipal laws of the kingdom. But we are now inquir- ing what the consequents will be between two contesting nations."
To the facts and main reasonings of this extract there seems little to be objected; but it turns, in some measure, on a principle which is too vague and elementary for the question really in his view, and is encumbered with consequences of a more doubtful kind, which his ac- tual intent did not require. The question can be put to a shorter issue.
The right of conquest being merely the right of force, is determin- ed by the immediate settlement which is consequently established, and carries with it the implication of consent. The conqueror, who must always be supposed to carry his conquest to the full extent that his purpose requires, takes life and property, and institutes some kind of government. All this is by the right of war as then understood : he imposes subjection, and receives the pledge of allegiance. To this point, power alone is his title, and the equity of his own breast, or his respect for opinion, his rule. From this point, the character of a conqueror, with all its rights, absolutely cease; his title is the settle- ment ; his power the constitution of government, settled and received. The only question about his power is, what is the law? not how he obtained it.
We grant that such a question may at any time be raised by a nation ; but it never can be decided, unless on the original terms : it is a question for arms alone to decide. Thus, though we arrive at the same conclusion with our author, we must object to some of his as- sumptions, which vitiate an important argument. Perhaps the reader may consider it trifling to quarrel with an argument in the intent of which we concur; but the manner of reasoning is not so indifferent: there is danger in the admission of a fallacy, which seems to open questions that have no existence in fact. It is neither just nor safe to say, that any question of right, in after times, can depend on an event of six centuries back. Such a mode of inquiry goes to the origin of rights, and necessarily arrives at some source of violence or usurpa- tion. It is a mistake in principle, and, when carried far enough,- is opposed to all rights whatever. And this it is which makes prescrip- tion the very foundation of human rights.
Nor does Molyneux stop until he allows his argument to carry him beyond the limits of discretion as well as reason. But we will not further detain the reader with disquisitions upon slight misapplications of principle, which no discriminating reader can fail to detect. Mr Molyneux having admitted the practice of the world to be different from his theory, next concedes the point for argument, and with more justice and force of reasoning, takes the ground already stated, of " concessions granted by " the conqueror.
From this he proceeds to an inquiry, for the purpose of showing " what concessions and grants have been made from time to time to the people of Ireland, and by what steps the laws of England came to be introduced into this kingdom." The steps of his argument from this become disentangled from the fallacies of his philosophy, and he
PERIOD.] WILLIAM MOLYNEUX. 37
states perspicuously and fairly, the several authoritative declarations, or grants and concessions, by which the kings of England, commenc- ing with Henry II., established and authorized the parliaments in Ire- land. These have been sufficiently detailed in the course of these me- moirs, and demand no present comment. Mr Molyneux pursues his argument to show the uniform independence of Ireland as a distinct and separate kingdom, upon authorities which we consider to be fully sufficient for such an inference, but familiar to the reader. He proves the fact up to the demise of Richard I., when the kingdom was abso- lutely vested in prince John, who then succeeding to the English crown, the question arises, whether England could have then, or from that period, obtained any dominion over Ireland? As it is evident that there can be no ground in theory why one of the two islands should obtain such authority rather than the other, it remained to inquire whether there existed any ground in fact, or in the nature of positive institution. To set this in a very strong point of view, Mr Molyneux cites various charters and declarations of right, in which it is quite apparent, that at the several times of their execution or de- claration, Ireland was separate by the admission of the English go- vernment. Some apparent exceptions occur, of which he easily dis- poses, and which hardly amount to fair ground for exception. The language of the English parliament occasionally seems to imply a juris- diction, or a power to bind Ireland; but the cases are either proofs of a disposition to usurp that right at the several times of their occur- rence, or are to be construed as simply declaratory of the sense of enact- ments which had become law in Ireland by the adoption of the Irish legislature: something, too, we imagine, should be allowed for pure inadvertence. From a variety of instances, he makes it manifest, that such laws as were passed in England with the design of 'comprising both kingdoms, were uniformly transmitted to Ireland, to be passed into law by the Irish parliament ; and indeed the history of Poyning's law, with the various controversies of which it was to the latest times the subject, make that question cle'ar enough. It would, with such a cumbrous system of legislative machinery as is evidenced by the entire parliamentary history of this island, be inconsistent and gratui- tous to assume a superfluous, inoperative, and occasional capacity of legislation in the English Parliament. The three express cases, which had been commonly cited by lawyers to maintain the ad- verse view, are clearly replied to by Mr Molyneux;* but there is a class of cases to which he adverts, which we shall more particularly point out, as curious for the evidence they give of the absence of any very, precise or systematic principle in the ancient boundaries and limitations of the several jurisdictions and authorities under discussion. "There have," says Molyneux, "been other statutes or ordinances made in England for Ireland, which may reasonably be of force here,
* These cases, as cited by Molyneux, are: — l.'Statutum Hiberniae, 14 Hen. III. 2. Ordinatio pro statu Hibernise, 17 Ed. I. 3. The Act that all staple commodi- ties passing out of England or Ireland shall be carried to Calais as loni? as the stanlo is at Calais, 2 Hen. VI. c. 4.
38 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
because they were made and assented to by our own representatives. Thus we find in the white-book of the Exchequer in Dublin, in the 9th year of Edward L, a writ sent to his chancellor of Ireland, wherein he mentions : * Qucedam statuta per nos de assensu prelatorum comi- tum baronum et communitatis regni nostrce Hiberni(B, nuper apud Lincoln et qucedam alia statuta postmodum apud Eboracum facta.' These, it may be supposed, were either statutes made at the request of the states of Ireland, to explain to them the common law of England, or, if they were introductive of new laws ; yet they might well be of force in Ireland, being enacted by the assent of our own representa- tives, the lords spiritual and temporal and the commons of Ireland; and, indeed, these are instances so far from making against our claim, that I think nothing can be more plainly for us; for it manifestly shows that the king and Parliament of England would not enact laws to bind Ireland without the concurrence of the representatives of this kingdom."
" Formerly," he continues, " when Ireland was but thinly peopled, and the English laws not fully current in all parts of the kingdom, 'tis probable that then they could not frequently assemble with conve- nience or safety to make laws in their own parliament at home ; and, therefore, during the heats of rebellions, or confusion of the times, they were forced to enact laws in England. But then this was always by proper representatives ; for we find that, in the reign of Edward III., (and by what foregoes, 'tis plain that 'twas so in Edward I.'s time,) knights of the shires, citizens, and burgesses, were elected in the shires, cities, and burroughs of Ireland, to serve in Parliament in England, and have so served accordingly. For amongst the records of the Tower of London, Rot. 1, clause 50, Edw. III. par. 2, mem. 23, we find a writ from the king at Westminster, directed to James But- ler, lord-justice of Ireland, and to R. archbishop of Dublin, his chan- cellor, requiring them to issue writs under the great seal of Ireland, to the several counties, cities, and burroughs, for satisfying the ex- penses of the men of that land who came over to serve in parliament in England. And in another roll, the 50th of Edw. III., mem. 19? on complaint to the king by John Draper, who was chosen burges of Cork, by writ, and served in the Parliament of England, and yet was denied his expenses by some of the citizens ; care was taken to reim- burse him.
"If, from these last-mentioned records, it be concluded that the par- liament of England may bind Ireland, it must also be allowed that the people of Ireland ought to have their representatives in the parlia- ment of England; and this, I believe, we should be willing enough to embrace ; but this is a happiness we can hardly hope for."
Having thus disposed of the ancient precedents, Mr Molyneux ob- serves of the more recent, "that they involve the very question under discussion, being the very grievances complained of as unwarranted in- novation." He nevertheless proceeds to inquire into their history and force as precedents.
Having, in the previous argument, established the conclusion, that before 1641 there was "no statute made in England, introductory of
PKRIOD.] WILLIAM MOLYNEUX. 39
a new law, that interfered with the right which the people of Ireland have to make laws for themselves," he admits that in 1641, and after, some laws were " made in England to be of force in Ireland."
Of these he shows in some detail, that they were liable in most in- stances to some qualifying consideration, by means of which the pre- cedent would be destroyed. They were repealed by the Irish Parlia- ment, which, in such case, would show that they did not bind the Irish legislature, or they were made in times of such flagrant confusion and disorganization of Ireland, as to be justified by the necessity of the times; a point which involves a primary principle, which Moly- neux does not appear to have contemplated;* or they were virtually English laws which had a secondary effect on Irish trade with or through England, but further had no force in Ireland. The Acts of Charles- II., namely, the Navigation Act, and two prohibiting the ex- portation of Irish wool, he admits to be exceptions to his argument, but denies that they are rightful enactments.
Mr Molyneux next and last arrives at his own time. In the re- mainder of the discussion, there is little on which we have not had oc- casion to dilate.
Mr Molyneux cites several instances of acts in the reign of Wil- liam III., of the English parliament comprehending Ireland in their provisions, and which met with unquestioning obedience. On the question, how far such instances might be regarded as precedent, in- volving a right, he meets the several cases with arguments mostly the same as those already adverted to in the more ancient instances. Either the necessity arising from the state of the kingdom, or the implied consent of Irish representations, or the consent, sub silentio, of the Irish legislature, to laws enacted seasonably in England for the evident benefit of Ireland. On these cases we may also repeat our ob- servation, that in a state of the kingdom uniformly marked by the want of systematic precision in the definition of its legislative and executive departments, and of which the civil organization was so in- complete and immature, precedents must be viewed as of little or no authority. The authority of precedent involves the principle of a certain system of laws and authorities, of which they are assumed to be the true result in certain contingencies : without this a precedent is itself no better than an accident. The whole history of Ireland is, from the very beginning to the date of this memoir, a succession of irregular processes and workings. There was, properly speaking, no theory : the question always should have been simply, what was the ex- istihg law — what were the rights of the kingdom by concession, treaty, or authoritative declaration of an acknowledged power in the state ? On this general principle, we agree with Mr Molyneux, that such cases do not in any way involve a right; and the more so, as a great and overwhelming preponderance of cases can be brought to confirm the ordinary recognition of an opposite right. So far as there was
* The political necessity thus admitted, appears to reopen the entire question, and place it on other grounds ; such, indeed, as to make the entire of the preceding argument a mere exercise in special pleading. Such a necessity might be estab- lished from the conquest to the union.
40 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
a constitutional system, it excluded the right of the English parliament to legislate for Ireland.
The same conclusion may be made with regard to any inferences from certain analogous questions, which he entertains, so far as they can be admitted to have any bearing on the question. It is inferred by Molyneux, that Coke's opinion that an English act of parliament should be held binding in Ireland, was derived from his notion of the subor- dination of the king's bench in Ireland, to that in England ; and this subordination seemed to be apparent, from the fact of a writ of error lying from the former to the latter. The practice is admitted, and its origin inquired into by Molyneux. He first notices the opinion of many Irish lawyers of his time, that these writs originated in an express act of the Irish parliament, " lost amongst a great many other acts which we want, for the space of 130 years at one time, and of 120 at another time;" to which he adds, " but it being only a gene- ral tradition, that there was such an act of our parliament, we only offer it as a surmise, the statute itself does not appear." Secondly, " When," says Mr Molyneux, " a judgment in Ireland is removed, to be reversed in England, the judges in England ought, and always do, judge according to the laws and customs of Ireland, and not accord- ing to the laws and customs of England, any otherwise than they may be of force in Ireland." Now, this is surely in itself conclusive; be- cause it contains a direct exclusion of the right of the English par- liament. The fact of a judgment being reversed, on the ground of English law, as such, would, it must be admitted, be a direct affirma- tion of the binding power of the English legislature. This important rule Molyneux confirms, by proper citations of cases, and concludes that the "jurisdiction of the king's bench in England, over a judg- ment of the king's bench in Ireland, does not proceed from any subordination of one kingdom to the other, but from some other rea- son." This reason he conjectures, and his conjecture is curious and interesting.
The want of skill in the interpretation of English laws, which had been largely adopted in Ireland, rendered the assistance of the English judges necessary from time to time, and "occasional messages to England, be- fore judgment given in Ireland, to be performed of the law." The effect of such a custom would be obviously to lead the still more anxious refer- ence of the litigants to the same source of authority, as well as afford a strong and warrantable ground to the losing party to question the sound- ness of the decision of an Irish judge. Accordingly, Mr Molyneux goes on to state that, " after decrees made, persons who thought themselves aggrieved by erroneous judgments applied themselves to the king of England for redress." And " thus," says Molyneux, " it must be, that writs of error (unless they had their sanction in parliament) became in use." The process is at least natural, and more likely than any other depending on conjecture. The objection to this, drawn from the previous conclusion, that the judgment was finally according to Irish, and not English law, is nugatory, for it admits the point in question ; but it is enough to recollect that the common law of England was, with slight exceptions and modifications, law in Ireland, by various charters -of ancient kings, as well as enactments of the Irish parlia-
PERIOD.] WILLIA.M MOLYNEUX. 41
ments. On this question Mr Molyneux also draws an argument, from the fact that in writs of error suit is made to the king only. We need not dilate on so obvious a point.
We may observe here, that in this inference from writs of error, two distinct arguments are involved; — first, the analogy whereby the subordination of the parliament is inferred from that of the court. This is clearly replied to by the affirmation that the appeal lies to the king. The other is, that the authority of the English court must needs involve that of the enactments of the English legislature, and is met by the reply, that the judgment was still according to Irish law, while the practice is accounted for by the fact, that numerous English laws had been at several times made law in Ireland, with the consent, or by the will of the Irish legislature.
Mr Molyneux concludes his argument by replying to several mis- cellaneous objections: into these it is unnecessary to proceed. Some of them are but repetitions of points already noticed ; some are frivolous ; some merely resting on, and resisted by, the absurdities of old poli- tical theories, as to the rights of nations or of mankind. We shall merely enumerate them nere. — England's title, on the consideration of money spent in the reduction of the country ; the right of England to bind by force any country which may injure its trade; the fact that Ireland is a colony from England. Such are the remaining objec- tions; which contain no force, and admit, therefore, little reply. We shall only remark, that Mr Molyneux finally opposes to the doctrine of legislative dependence, the strict provisions of Poyning's act, which would be a " needless caution, if the king and parliament of England had power at any time to revoke or annul such proceedings."
In 1782, this subject was renewed in a spirited debate in the Irish house of commons — a debate in which Grattan, Flood, Langrishe, and other eminent Irishmen, whose names are yet on the tongues of living men, bore a remarkable part. We shall have, therefore, to look again on the subject, and, as well as we can, recall the circumstances in a more interesting aspect. Mr Molyneux was actuated by a pure senti- ment of patriotism, and we believe his true feelings on the occasion are justly expressed in his preface, in which he tells the reader " how unconcerned I am in any of those particular inducements, which might seem at this juncture to have occasioned the following discourse." " I have not any concern in wool or the wool trade. I am no ways interested in the forfeitures or grants. I am not at all solicitous whether the bishop or the society of Derry recover the land they contest about."
The pamphlet excited a vast sensation on its appearance. The English house of commons was infuriated by an argument which seemed to be an attack on their authority, and in their inconsiderate heat passed a resolution, " that the book published by Mr Molyneux was of dangerous tendency to the crown and people of England, by denying the authority of the king and parliament of England to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland, and the subordination and depend- ence that Ireland had, and ought to have, upon England, as being united and annexed to the imperial crown of England." They pre- sented an address to king William, who felt himself compelled to give
42 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
way to the impulse of the moment, and promise to enforce the laws which bound the Irish parliament. But the animosity of their excite- ment is more clearly indicated by the fact, that they ordered the offending pamphlet to be burned by the hangman.
That such proceedings were not altogether a surprise to the author, may be collected from a paragraph in his first preface, in which he writes, " I have heard it said, that perhaps I might run some hazard in attempting the argument; but I am not at all apprehensive of any such danger. We are in a miserable condition, indeed, if we may not be allowed to complain when we think we are hurt," &c.
The pamphlet received several replies, and was generally received with a strong sensation of favour or hostility by the Irish public. It was at the time not quite unseasonable. The violent effects of a long and destructive revolution had left a collapse upon the public mind, which in Ireland has often been the effect of over excitement, so that the calm was as likely to prove fatal as the storm. Insubordination is the precursor and parent of servility ; and the sentiments of terror, and vindictive memory of suffering and wrongs, too naturally subside into the disposition to find safety and reveng'e in oppression.
There was a strong friendship between Molyneux and Locke, in whose essay on the human understanding his name has the honour to be mentioned as " that very ingenious and studious promoter of real knowledge," in a manner which shows the high and intimate corre- spondence on questions then of the utmost literary interest, which existed between him and that great and truly illustrious philosopher. The problem there mentioned as coming from Molyneux, is necessa- rily trite to every academical reader ; but as our circle comprehends a larger compass, we shall extract it here5 as giving a higher notion of intellectual power than can be conveyed on any political topic. The design of Mr Locke is to explain and illustrate his proposition, that the ideas of sensation are often changed by the judgment ; or, in other words, that a large class of ideas, which are supposed to be pure sensations, are by habit compounded from our knowledge of the re- ality of things, and our sensations. The following is the illustration : — " Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell when he felt the one and the other, which is the cube and which is the sphere. Suppose, then, the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man to be made to see. Query, whether by his sight before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube?" To which the acute and judicious proposer answers, — " Not; for though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not yet attained the experience, that that which affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so; or that a protube- rant angle in the cube that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube." " I agree," continues Locke, " with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this, his problem."* This problem involves the entire
* Locke's Essay, b. 11, c. 9, $ 8.
PERIOD.] RICHARD COOTE, EARL OF BELLAMONT. 43
theory of the chapter in which it occurs, and if there had been no previous communication on the subject, indicates an uncommon range of accurate thought. There appears to have indeed been a remarkable similarity of intellectual constitution between Molyneux and his illus- trious friend. A fact, less to the honour of both, displays a striking coincidence. Speaking- of Blackmore's poetry, in a letter to Locke, Molyneux writes, " All our English poets, except Milton, have been ballad-makers to him." To which Locke replies, " I find, with plea- sure, a strange harmony throughout, between your thoughts and mine." As was then usual in the world of letters, this correspondence ori- ginated and continued long without any meeting having taken place. On the occasion of his celebrated pamphlet, Molyneux expressed a great anxiety to meet and consult with Locke. He crossed over to England in the year 1698, and remained some months, when he had the happiness of becoming personally intimate with his honoured cor- respondent. On his departure, another meeting was concerted for the following spring. But his health was frail, and his constitution broken by one of the most terrible diseases to which the human frame is liable. Soon after his return, a fit of the stone led to the eruption of a blood- vessel, of which he died in two days, October llth, 1698. His inter- ment took place in St Andrew's church, where there is a monument and Latin inscription.
Cloote, fEarl of ifcliamont*
DIED A.D. 1700.
ON the restoration, when Sir Charles Coote was created earl of Mountrath for his eminent services to the king; his brother, Richard, who had taken an equally active part in bringing about this happy event, was created baron Coote of Colooney. His son, Richard, the subject of our present memoir, was returned member of parliament for Droitwich, in Worcestershire, in 1688, but was attainted the fol- lowing year in one held by James II., in Dublin, in consequence of his unequivocal support of the prince of Orange, being one of the first of his adherents who joined him publicly. He was appointed treasurer and receiver-general to the queen, and governor of the county of Leitrim, and was advanced by patent, in the same year, to the dignity of earl of Bellamont.
In the beginning of 1 695, he was nominated governor of New York, which was then in a state of the most perfect misrule ; smugglers and pirates setting the laws at defiance, and moral profligacy increasing in an exact proportion to their neglect. The inducements to accept of such a governorship must have been small, or rather the temptation to reject it great ; but lord Bellamont's concurrence was at once secured by the terms in which the king couched the offer. He told him he considered him " a man of resolution and integrity, and with those qualifications, more likely than any other he could think of, to put a stop to that illegal trade, and to the growth of piracy; for which reason he made choice of him for that government, and for the same reason intended to put the government of New England into his
44 POLITICAL SERIES. [FouRTH
hands."* The earl, in conversing with colonel Levingston, knowing that he had had various employments in the province, discussed the subject at great length, and expressed his determination to put down both practices in the most summary manner, and with the strong arm of the law. The colonel suggested his engaging the services of cap- tain William Kid, who had lately arrived from that country in a trading vessel of his own, and who was well known to colonel Levingston as a person of great shrewdness, activity, and resource, an excellent sailor, and well acquainted with the habits and haunts of the pirates. He proposed that he should be given the command of one of the king's ships of about thirty guns, with an hundred and fifty men, and that he should be invested with ample powers to hunt out and exterminate the offenders.
Lord Bellamont at once communicated the project to the king, who consulted the admiralty upon the subject; but the pressing need there was of ships for carrying on the war, joined to the uncertainty of the undertaking, and the great distance at which it was to be performed, determined them to reject the proposition.
Colonel Levingston, however, whose mind was heated upon the sub- ject, was not to be discouraged, and he accordingly stated to the earl, that if persons of consideration and property could be induced to join in the expense of fitting out a vessel, that he, from his high opinion of Kid's capability and integrity, would become a guarantee for the safe return of the vessel, and his fidelity in the execution of the trust reposed in him. He also expressed his willingness that he and Kid should be at the fifth part of the expense, and reiterated his convic- tion as to the ultimate success of the project.
On these offers being communicated to the king, he at once acceded to them, and in expressing his high approval of the undertaking, pro- mised a free grant to the adventurers, of all Kid's captures, with the exception of a small reservation, to mark his being a partner to the expedition. On this sanction, the chancellor, along with lords Romney, Shrewsbury, and Oxford, advanced £6000, with which the galley was quickly fitted out; and on the 10th December, Kid received a commis- sion from the admiral as a private man-of-war, to act against the French, and another under the great seal, authorizing him to pursue, take, and bring to instant trial, all pirates and sea-robbers, whom he might meet with infesting the seas.
He sailed from London in February, 1 695, and his employers received no intelligence of, or from him, for three years: when at length the East India, Company learned through their factors, that in place of attacking and suppressing the pirates, he had become one of their body, and that he had recently seized a Moorish vessel, called the Quedah Merchant, in which there were goods of immense value. The disap- pointment of the adventurers was great, but particularly of Levingston, who felt his own character in some degree compromised by the treacherous deception practised by Kid, for whose success and honesty he stood pledged. In the year following, the president and council of Nevis announced to the Secretary of State, that Kid had returned into the American seas, after which he had sailed to Rhode Island ; when,
* Lodge.
PERIOD.] RICHARD COOTE, EARL OF BELLAMONT.- 45
either touched by remorse for his perfidious conduct, or calculating on the probability of his ultimately falling into the hands of the governor, he wished to secure the only chance there existed of obtaining pardon for the past, by voluntarily coming forward, pleading innocence, and de- livering up his prize laden with booty, as a warrant for his good faith. He accordingly sent an emissary to the earl of Bellamont, to Boston, informing him that he had brought the Quedah Merchant, which he had taken in the Indian seas, and which contained goods of great value, into a creek on the coast of Hispaniola. He also brought addi- tional goods to the amount of £10,000, in a sloop in which he sailed himself, hoping to make terms with the governor, and stating that he could bring forward credible witnesses to prove his innocence.
The earl, satisfied of his guilt, but anxious to get him into his power, after consulting with his council, wrote him a letter, assuring him that if he could make his innocence clear, he need have no appre- "hension in coming to Boston. Kid accordingly landed on the 1st of June, and was examined before lord Bellamont and the council. His answers to the charges against him were unsatisfactory and evasive, and served rather to criminate than clear him. The earl accordingly committed him, and the most guilty portion of his crew into close custody, and had the goods assigned to the care of agents appointed by the council, prudently declining to take any personal charge of them.
He was indefatigable in his efforts to trace and recover Kid's con- cealed booty, a great portion of which was at length secured, while a statement of the entire transaction was forwarded to the Secretary of State and Council of Trade, requesting that an immediate order might be sent for the transmission of the prisoners to England, as the laws in America did not admit of their being brought to capital punishment.
Kid was accordingly sent to London, in April, 1700, and examined before the lords of the Admiralty, after which he was committed to Newgate, and kept in close confinement. In the spring following, the House of Commons undertook the investigation of the business, and after a very long debate upon the question, whether " a grant passed under the great seal of England to Richard, earl of Bellamont and others, of all the goods and other things which should be taken by Kid from Thomas Too, John Ireland, and others, in the said grant mentioned, as pirates, before their conviction, is illegal and void, it passed in the negative."*
Lord Bellamont died at New York, March 5th, 1700, and left two sons who were successive earls of Bellamont. The General As- sembly, who were sitting at Boston when the account of his death arrived, immediately published a proclamation through the province, ordering that a general fast should be observed, to express their deep sense of the public calamity inflicted by his death, and of their vener- ation for his high and unblemished character.
His wife, Catharine, daughter and heiress to Bridges Nanson, Esq. of Bridgemorton, survived him, and is stated by Lodge, to have given birth to her first son before she was twelve years of age, and to have married her fourth husband in her seventy-second year, which was also the year of her death.
* Lodge.
46 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
SIR Faithful Fortescue was lineally descended from that Sir John Fortescue, (chief justice to Henry VI.,) whom Raleigh calls " that notable bulwark of our laws," and inherited the same devoted loyalty which distinguished his ancestor. He removed into Ireland early in the reign of James I., and commanded a regiment of horse under his uncle the lord-deputy, by whom he was knighted; and in November 1 606, was made joint governor of Carrickfergus, with Roger Langford, Esq.* He acquired extensive property in the counties of Down, Louth, and Antrim, besides Dromisken castle within ten miles of Drogheda. He also purchased from Rory Oge MacQuillane, an estate in the Lower Claneboy and county of Antrim, (which had been granted to Rory by patent,) and which Sir Faithful also wished to hold by the same tenure. The king accordingly granted him a patent to hold the lands in capite, directly from himself, " by the twentieth part of a knight's fee, and the rent of £5 Irish; he to find two horsemen and /six footmen well appointed for war, whenever called thereunto by the chief-governor of Ireland, or by the governor of Carrickfergus, for his majesty's service in the province of Ulster."']' In the same year, he was permitted to impark in this manor 1000 acres. He was appoint- ed by the lord-deputy Wentworth, who held him in high estimation, to inspect the king's stores and garrisons in Leinster, and to make an accurate report of their supplies, and state of defence.
When the rebellion broke out, his life was in imminent danger, and it was with difficulty he escaped from the surrounding massacre. When, however, after many dangers, he at length arrived in England, he solicited employment in the Irish war, and was appointed to the command of a troop destined for that country. Full of martial valour, and of devoted attachment to the king, his heart was sickened at finding himself entangled in the trammels of the parliament ; his troop, along with many others, being pressed into their service. He was ap- pointed major to Sir William Waller's regiment. Waiting only for an opportunity, at the battle of Edgehill he determined to free himself from its detested yoke. He watched for the moment when the king's troops were about to make a charge, and having previously in- structed his own, he impetuously rushed forward ; when within little more than " a carabine's shot of his own body," he and his followers, discharging their pistols on the ground, joined prince Rupert, and suddenly wheeled round to the dismay of their former associates." " Whether," says the historian, " this sudden accident, as it might very well, and they not knowing how many more were of the same mind, each man looking upon his companion with the same apprehension as upon the enemy, or whether the terror of prince Rupert and the king's horse, or altogether with their own evil consciences, wrought upon them, I know not ; but that the whole wing, having unskilfully discharged their carabines and pistols into the air, wheeled about, the king's liorse
• Lodge. t IbiJ.
PERIOI).] SIR FAITHFUL FORTESCUE. 47
charging in the flank and rear, and having thus absolutely routed them, pursued them flying, and had the execution of them above two miles. So that this disorder of their cavalry, occasioned by the going-over of Sir Faithful Fortescue with his troop, must have been fatal to the earl of Essex and his army, if prince Rupert had shown as much conduct as courage."
Sir Faithful remained in England for some years, and continued a steady supporter of the king's cause until after his death. Cromwell was then glad to secure the services of a character of such known fidel- ity, and of such high and general estimation, and induced him to accept the command of a regiment of horse, which was then preparing to em- bark for Ireland. The parliament, however, was not destined to profit long by that fidelity, as it again reverted to its more legitimate object. At the battle of Worcester, he assisted Charles II. with this very regiment, and fled with the discomfited monarch to France. At the restoration, he was made a gentleman of the privy chamber, attending his majesty's person, and was so much esteemed by him, that he never suffered him to leave him during the remaining period of his life. His person was strikingly handsome, and his manners prepossessing. He married twice ; his first wife, Anne, who was daughter to Gerald, lord viscount Drogheda, brought him sixteen children. His second wife was Ellinor Symonds, a widow.
His grandson, William Fortescue of Ne wrath, in the county of Louth, was the ancestor of the Clermont family, and took a prominent posi- tion during the troubles of James's reign. Having been appointed in 1 688 to the command of the town of Bandon, he, with a comparatively small force, repulsed from its gates lord Clancarty's newly reinforced army, attacked and conquered all the Irish out-posts, and after a sharp and bloody contest, remained master of the town, where he immedi- ately proclaimed William and Mary as its rightful sovereigns. This conquest, however, cost him dear ; for, when the town had subsequently to surrender, lord Clancarty took a mean and malignant revenge, not only on himself and his property, but also on the unoffending members of his family. In perfidious disregard of the articles of surrender, which had been additionally confirmed by king James on his landing, he confined captain Fortescue in the jail of Cork for eleven months, among thieves and felons ; and, during this period, selected the com- panies out of his army, who had been previously disarmed by him in Bandon, to sack, burn, and destroy his house and property in the county of Louth; they too faithfully fulfilled the savage injunc- tions ; for, having burned his dwelling and stripped his children, they left them so miserably exposed, that they quickly fell victims to the inhuman treatment they had experienced. In 1681, he married Margaret, only daughter of Nicholas Gernon, by whom he left seven children.
48 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
BORN A.D. 1655 — DIED A. D. 1725.
THE family of Molesworth had attained wealth and distinction during the reigns of the Plantagenets, and Sir Walter accompanied Edward I. to the Holy Land, to which circumstance there is an allusion in his coat of arms. Robert was a posthumous child, and his father appears to have been one of the first of the family who settled in Ireland. He was accordingly brought up by his mother, and her parents, of whom she was the last surviving child out of twenty-one. He received his edu- cation in Dublin college, and was remarkable for his literary attain- ments, and high and independent character. In 1688, when the prince of Orange entered England, he immediately joined him, and was one of his most zealous and devoted adherents. He was consequently attainted the following year by king James's parliament, and his estate, of near £3000 a-year, sequestrated. On the accession of William, however, he was reinstated; and that monarch, having a personal regard for him, and a high opinion of his political powers, nominated him a member of his privy council, and afterwards sent him as envoy extraordinary to the court of Denmark, where he resided for several years. He there wrote his History of Denmark, besides several other works, which were suited to the politics of the period, and were highly estimated, both for their eloquence and the forcible line of reasoning by which his opinions were sustained and established.
In the succeeding reign he became a member of the privy council, and was valued and respected by all parties for his high talents, and incorruptible integrity. His second son, Richard, who subsequently inherited the title, had the honour of saving the life of the duke of Marlborough at the battle of Ramillies. He had been intended by his father for the bar, and was sent to finish his studies at the temple ; but being of a very ardent temperament, and loathing the life of in- action to which he was destined, he secured the services of a faithful servant, disposed of his books, and set sail for Flanders, where he served as a volunteer, until the earl of Orkney, who was a particular friend of his father, gave him, in 1702, a commission. His own merit and active services during the war, obtained for him a troop of horse, and he was also appointed aide-de-camp to the duke of Marl- borough. On the day of the battle he distinguished himself by many acts of personal daring, and was foremost in accompanying the duke into every post of danger. Various statements have been made of the circumstances connected with the imminent peril, and providential escape of the duke, on that day. Lodge gives an extract from a letter which he says was authenticated by lord Molesworth himself, and which describes both with great accuracy. It is as follows : — " As for the particular account you so earnestly desire of me, I here send it to you, word for word, as related to me by lord Molesworth himself, having carefully taken it down from a conversation that lately passed between us. He introduced his story, by observing that this remark-
PfittlOD.J ROBERT, FIRST VISCOUNT MOLESWORTH. 49
able fact, however evident in all its circumstances, was very industri- ously hushed up in the army; which, he said, was the easier done, be- cause he himself was quite silent upon it.
" He then proceeded to a short description of one particular circum- stance of the field of battle, as necessary to my understanding the following relation, and informed me, that from the river Mehaigne, which covered the right flank of the French army and the left of our's, to the village of Ramillies, which was about the centre of the two lines, the ground was firm, plain, and open ; in short, fit for cavalry to act upon; that from Ramillies to the enemy's left, and our right, the ground, on the contrary, was low, marshy, and cut through by many ditches and streams, not easily passable by either army in the face of the other. That the enemy, who had long been acquainted with this ground, and well saw the advantage to be made of its situation, had extremely strengthened their right wing of horse, not only with num- bers, but with their choicest troops; with which having attacked our cavalry on the left, whom they greatly out-numbered, they soon obliged them to give ground in great confusion, their line following in great order. He said, that the duke of Marlborough perceiving this, and apprehending the consequence of the disorder, if not timely remedied, commanded some battalions of foot to advance, and properly post themselves for stopping the enemy ; despatched an aide-de-camp to our right wing with orders for a considerable reinforcement of English and other cavalry, to be sent from thence to the left; and, in the meantime, judging it necessary to keep the enemy at bay ; after he had, with great trouble and fatigue, rallied the disordered squadrons, he put himself at the head of them, and led them to the enemy. And here it was, that our advanced squadrons being repulsed and in great confusion, some of the run-aways, quite blinded by their fear, rode against the duke, who was leading up the other squadrons to sustain them; jostled him off his horse, and rode over him; at which time the remaining body of horse likewise fled, and left the duke lying on the field with none near him but captain Molesworth, then one of his aides- de-camp ; who, perceiving not only the enemy's line to advance upon him, but besides, a small body that had detached itself from the line as for a pursuit, saw that the duke must inevitably fall into their hands, unless he could find the means of getting him off, in which not a moment was to be lost. The duke's horse, when he was thrust off him, had run away beyond the line ; nothing therefore remained for captain Molesworth to do, but the mounting him, if possible, on his, which he at last effected, but with difficulty; for, when the duke was rode over, some horse had trod on his stomach, so that he lay upon the ground almost senseless, and could very little help himself. The captain, however, got his Grace into the saddle, put the rein in his hand, and turning the horse's head to our line, entreated his Grace to push him that way with his utmost speed, as he accordingly did ; but had not cleared the ground above three minutes before the above- mentioned detachment came up full speed over the spot, so eager in pursuit of the duke, whom they had certainly singled out, that the captain then had the good fortune to escape their notice.
" By this time the duke had got within some of our battalions of foot,
VOL. IV. D
50 POLITICAL SERIES. [FouaTH
and the pursuers pressing pretty close upon the most advanced among them, which was the regiment of Albemarle Swiss; that regiment gave them their platoons very handsomely, and soon sent them back the same way, somewhat faster than they had come on; however, they now thought fit to pay the captain a little more respect than they had done before, and honoured him, as they went by, with a few strokes of their broadswords ; but so luckily, that he came off with only carrying their black marks about his shoulders for some time after.
" The regiment of Albemarle, he said, continued firing to the front as long as they thought they might do any damage to the enemy, of whom they dropt a good number to the right and left of him; but upon the first suspension of fire and smoke, he made them all the signal he could, of being a friend, and then went into that battalion, where he was received with great friendship and some surprise by colonel Constant, who said that he was equally rejoiced and wondered at his escape, and that he doubted not but he should soon see him at the head of a regiment.
" He then told him that the duke had got between the lines, and had gone towards the centre. While the captain was making his way as well as he could, on foot, he, by chance, met with a foreign soldier holding the duke's horse by the bridle; who, upon his claiming the horse, and giving him a patacoon, immediately resigned him, and then the captain, mounting that horse, pursued his way in quest of his Grace.
" He found him upon a rising ground fronting the village of Ramil- lies, with a number of general officers and others about him, to whom he was distributing his orders; and when he saw the captain, he said, he hoped he was not hurt.
" The captain, soon after, observing that his horse, which the duke still mounted, was a little unquiet, showed him his own, and said, that might probably prove less troublesome to him; upon which his Grace shifting back to his own horse, and colonel Bringfield, his first ecuyer, holding his stirrup, the enemy, just at that time, discharged a battery from the village of Ramillies, which came amongst the group of us, and one of the balls, after grazing, rose under the horse's belly, and took Mr Bringfield in the head;" in other words, shot his head off, and, as it is elsewhere stated, stunned the duke.
The captain's father, the subject of our present memoir, became the object of party jealousy in the latter end of queen Anne's reign, anft was removed from the privy council in consequence of a complaint from the lower House, charging him with saying, in the presence- chamber, the previous day, that " They that have turned the world up- side down, are come hither also;" and he was besides accused of affronting the clergy in convocation, when they presented their address in favour of the lord- chancellor Phibbs.
Being always a stanch supporter of the claims and principles of the house of Hanover, George I. appointed him a member of his privy council in Ireland, and a commissioner of trade and plantations. He also advanced him to the peerage by the titles of baron of Philipstown and viscount Molesworth of Swords, and accordingly, in 1719, he took his seat in the House of Lords. His zealous and indefatigable atten-
PERIOD.] ARTHUR DILLON. 51
tion to public affairs gradually impaired his health, and he wisely resolved to withdraw from the scene of turmoil, and to spend the remaining- years of his life in the bosom of his family, and the enjoy- ment of those literary tastes he had so highly cultivated. A very limited period, however, was all that was granted for the fulfilment of these hopes and plans : he died in the course of two years, at the age of sixty-nine, and was buried at Swords. His wife was Letitia, third daughter of Richard, lord Colooney, and sister to the earl of Bella- mont. She brought him seven sons and four daughters. Two of his sons succeeded each other in the title, one of whom was the captain Molesworth alluded to above. His widow and several members of his family met with an awful fate — being burned to death in 1763. Lord Molesworth left fifty pounds towards the building of a church in Philipstown.
Dillon*
DIED A. D. 1732.
ARTHUR DILLON was the third son of the seventh viscount of that name, who was a colonel in the army of king James, and suffered much from his adherence to that monarch; his wife, a daughter of Sir Henry Talbot, of Mount Talbot, in the county of Roscommon, having been killed in Limerick, during the siege, by the second bomb thrown into the town, and he himself outlawed in 1690.
The outlawry, however, was reversed by the Court of King's Bench, in 1697, after his death, and his son Richard was summoned to par- liament as a peer of the realm.
Arthur, of whom we now write, entered early into the service of France, and commanded an Irish regiment there before he was twenty. In 1705, he was made a mareschal de camp, was governor of Toulon, and distinguished himself in so many engagements, that he was looked up to as one of the first generals of his time. His soldiers loved and venerated him, and followed him with enthusiasm, while the military commanders of his period bore ample testimony to his skill and valour in the field.
He married Christiana, daughter of Ralph Sheldon, Esq., by whom he had five sons and three daughters. The sons inherited their father's valour and military talents, and two of them fell in the service of the French king, who so highly appreciated their devoted zeal, that he declared he would not give the command of the regiment in which they served to any who did not bear their name, and it was thenceforward distinguished by the title of the Dillon regiment.
His two elder sons became successive viscounts, inheriting the family title from their uncle ; and his youngest son, who entered the church, was made archbishop of Thoulouse, and subsequently of Nar- bonne, primate of Gaul, and president of the states of Languedoc.* He died himself in 1732.
* Lodge.
52 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
fa ©ourcg, 35arott
BORN A. D. 1664— DIED A. D. 1719.
ALMERICUS, the twenty-third baron, succeeded his brother Patrick when he was but five years old. He became a great favourite with Charles II., who granted him a pension of £300 a-year, which was continued to him in the following reign. He served in the army of James, first commanding an independent troop of horse, and after- wards as lieutenant -colonel of the earl of Lucan's regiment, for which he was outlawed in 1691 ; but the outlawry was s"oon after reversed.
Under these circumstances, it may seem strange that he should be the first personally to assert the privilege to which his family lay claim, of remaining with the head covered in the presence of royalty. We have already related the traditionary origin of this privilege, in the memoir of the first De Courcy who settled in this country.* " Almeri- cus," says Lodge, " being very handsome in person, and of a tall stature, his lordship one day attended king William's court, and being admitted into the presence-chamber, asserted the privilege of being covered be- fore his majesty, by walking to and fro with his hat upon his head. The king observing this, sent one of his nobles to inquire the reason of his appearing before him with his head covered ; to whom 'he replied, he very well knew in whose presence he stood, and the reason why he wore his hat that day, was, because he stood before the king of England. This answer being told the king, and his lordship approach- ing nearer the throne, he was required by his majesty to explain himself, which he did to this effect: — 'May it please your majesty, my name is Courcy, and I am lord of Kingsale, in your kingdom of Ireland. The reason of my appearing covered in your majesty's presence, is to assert the ancient privilege of my family, granted to Sir John de Courcy, earl of Ulster, and his heirs, by John, king of England, for him and his successors for ever.' The king replied, that he remem- bered he had such a nobleman, and believed the privilege he asserted to be his right; and, giving him his hand to kiss, his lordship paid his obeysance, and remained uncovered."
He died, February, 1719, without leaving any issue by his lady, who survived him, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was succeeded in his title and estates by his cousin Gerald, the son of Miles de Courcy, third son of Patrick, the twentieth lord. This Patrick married a daughter of John Fitz- Gerald of Dromana, in the county of Waterford, when she was but fourteen, and had by her twenty-three children. On the visit of George IV. to Ireland, this privilege was again claimed, and again recognised.
* See Part II. page 319.
PERIOD.] RICHARD FITZ-PATRICK, LORD GOWRAN. 53
dFit^atricfe, Hot* ffiotoratr*
DIED A.D. 1727.
THE subject of our present memoir, was the son of John Fitz-Patrick, Esq. of Castletown, and of Elizabeth, daughter of the lord viscount Thurles, and sister to the first duke of Ormonde. Richard early selected the navy as his profession, and in May, 1687, was ap- pointed commander of the Richmond. He signalized himself on vari- ous occasions, by his valour and conduct; and was very successful in attacking and keeping in check the French privateers, which had been previously very destructive to our commerce in the German ocean. In 1690, he was promoted to the St Albans, and in the same year attacked a French frigate of thirty-six guns, which, after a severe contest of four hours, he took, with the loss of only four men belong- ing to his own ship, while the enemy lost forty ; they had also the advantage of having fifty fusileers on board, besides two hundred men belonging to the frigate. In the following year, he drove two more of their frigates on shore, and, in conjunction with some other vessels, took fourteen rich merchantmen out of a convoy of twenty-two. He commanded a ship of seventy guns under Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and was detached by him, with several vessels under his command, to attack the Grovais, (one of the islands called Cardinals,) from whence he brought off thirteen thousand head of cattle and horses, besides many of their vessels, and did considerable damage to the property on the island. His elder brother, who had distinguished himself in vari- ous military commands from the period of the revolution, was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, and king William, in consideration of the faithful services of both brothers, granted to them, in 1696, " the estate of Edward Morris, forfeited by his being killed at Aughrim, which consisted of the towns and lands of Grantstown, Donoghmore, Rahindornagh, Barnaballmoragh, Lower-Derry, Belady, the north- east of Derrylaghan, Cramrosse, Maherrbegg, Ballinrawly-wood, called Clanconragh, Mongamore, and others in the queen's county." The general, who was in England, made immediate arrangements to take possession of his new property, but was drowned in crossing the channel the very month after he had obtained the joint nomination to this grant. His brother, Richard, accordingly took possession of the en- tire, to which he afterwards made large additions, both by purchases, and also by marriage.
On the breaking out of tne war in the following reign, he obtained the command of the Ranelagh of eighty guns, and was employed in the expedition against Cadiz, and also took part in the attack on Vigo. He shortly after retired from the service ; and on the accession of George I., was raised to the peerage, with the title of baron Gowran. He was a zealous supporter of the protestant succession and interests, and was as remarkable in private life for his amiability and unswerving integrity, as he was in his profession, for valour and humanity.
In 1718, he married Anne, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John.
54 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
Robinson of Farmingwood, in the county of Northampton, by whom he had two sons, the elder of whom was subsequently created earl of Upper Ossory. He died in 1727.
Sfr aaitlltam
DIED A. D. 1715.
AMONG the naval heroes of his time, Sir William Jumper stands high for valour and desert. Charnock says, " few men who have not lived to attain the rank of commanders-in-chief, or at least flag-officers, have ever acquired so much renown as this gentleman." He was born in Bandon, in the county of Cork; and was appointed, by lord Dart- mouth, second lieutenant of the Resolution, in 1688. He served sub- sequently in various vessels, and in all obtained credit and distinction. In 1694, he was appointed to the command of the Weymouth, a fourth rate, and in the June following, he pursued and took a very large French privateer. In the same month he captured a second, and on the 31st of August, took a third, mounting twenty-eight guns. The captain of this vessel being a man of great courage and determination, and having a large and resolute crew to support him, held out long and desperately, and did not yield till he had thirty men killed, and nearly that number mortally wounded. In 1695, he captured two more privateers, and shortly after, a very large one coming from St Maloes, which, being much superior in size to the Weymouth, made a desperate resistance, and only yielded when the loss of masts and men made it impossible to sustain the contest. Similar successes followed with astonishing rapidity ; but a domestic affliction awaited him, capable of overshadowing them all. His wife, who remained on board during his stay at Plymouth, was returning to the shore in a small pinnace, when it suddenly overset, and she, and captain Smith of the Portland, who accompanied her, were both unhappily drowned.
On recovering from the effects of this awful and unlooked-for cal- amity, he returned to active service, and the same almost uninterrupted success followed his undertakings; privateers, prizes, and ships of war being successively captured. He was at length appointed to the Lenox, which was ordered to serve under Sir George Rooke, in his expedition against Cadiz. " In this attack he took a more pro- minent part than any other naval commander; successfully executing the arduous services intrusted to him, wi^i the most spirited address." In the subsequent brilliant successes of the confederates, he was an active participator. Sir George had scarcely left Cadiz, on his return home, when, as we have already related, he received intelligence that a most valuable fleet of Spanish galleons had put into Vigo, together with their escort, commanded by that well-known officer, Mons. Chateau Renaud. Sir George, in conjunction with the duke of Ormonde, instantly resolved on attempting the capture of the fleet, and they succeeded beyond their most sanguine expectations. In this enter- prise captain Jumper took a prominent and active part; the treasure, and
PERIOD.] SIR JAMES HAMILTON, FIRST VISCOUNT STRABANE. 55
articles of merchandise taken and destroyed on this occasion, amounted to between four and five millions sterling1, while the injury sustained by the enemies' ships had never been exceeded unless in the instances of the destruction of the Armada, and the battle off Cape La Hogue. Twenty ships and vessels of war, fifteen of which were of two decks, together with thirteen galleons, were included in the destruction and capture made and effected on this occasion. Captain Jumper was eminently instrumental in the reduction of Gibraltar, and was severely wounded in an engagement off Malaga, where he fought and overcame three of the enemy's ships.
On his return to England, he received the honour of knighthood from queen Anne ; but what seems strange, he never changed his ship during a service of many years continuance. On his retirement, how- ever, from the service at a later period, he received a handsome pen- sion. While waiting at Lisbon to convoy the fleet to England, he received intelligence that the garrison at Gibraltar were in a state approaching to mutiny, for want of money, their pay having been for some time necessarily stopped, in consequence of no specie having arrived. He accordingly on his own responsibility, despatched one of the vessels under his command with a supply, and thus probably preserved to the government, that important fortress.
His ship was one of those which accompanied Sir Cloudesley Shovel home in 1707, and while he arrived in safety at Falmouth, on the fatal 22d of October, his less fortunate commander, with two other ships of war, was cast away on the Scilly isles, and drowned, or, as has been recently stated from documents in the possession of the earl of Rom- ney, he was inhumanly and treacherously murdered by a woman, on that island, who many years after confessed the fact on her death-bed, when she produced an emerald ring which she had taken from his finger, and which (with other valuables cast upon the shore) tempted her to the horrid deed. The ring is at present in the possession of the earl of Berkeley.
It is believed that Sir William never went to sea again. In 1 7 1 4 he was appointed commissioner of the navy, resident at Portsmouth, and died the March following.
Sir Same* jB|amfltont dfim discount Strafiane,
DIED A. D. 1734.
THE family of Hamilton are amongst the most ancient and distin- guished in the kingdom. They are descended from Robert, the first earl of Leicester, who accompanied William the First, from Normandy, and commanded the right wing of his army in the battle of Hastings ; after which, William, in dividing the kingdom amongst his followers, gave him no less than ninety-one lordships and manors in the counties of Leicester, Warwick, &c., &c. One of his early descendants took the name of Hamilton or Hambledon, from the place of his birth, which was a manor in the county of Leicestershire.
Sir James, was grandson to Sir George Hamilton, who married the
56 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
sister of the duke of Ormonde, and was son to James Hamilton, groom of the bed-chamber to Charles II., to which office his son succeeded at the early age of seventeen. After the accession of James, he became a member of the privy council, and commanded a regiment of horse. On perceiving, however, the king's decided hostility to the protestant cause, and his determination, at all risks, to introduce popery, he resolved at once to sacrifice all personal considerations, and quit his service, rather than compromise those opinions and principles which had been transmitted to him through so many generations, and of which his father had been a strenuous supporter. Unwilling to remain an idle spectator of the important contest which was then in progress, he entered into the service of William at the period of the revolution, and carried arms and ammunition, as has been before related, to the relief of Londonderry, when besieged by the army of king James ; it so happened, that his uncle Richard Hamilton, who was then a lieutenant-general, was one of the assailants, and did every thing in his power to aggravate the sufferings of the besieged. Pro- videntially, the supplies brought by captain Hamilton enabled the city to hold out until the arrival of general Kirke, when the siege was raised. After his grandfather's death, he refused to assume the title of baronet; but in the year 1700, was obliged to bear a superior one from the earldom of Abercorn devolving upon him, as next heir to earl Charles, the last male branch of Claud, first earl of Strabane, who was second son of James, the first earl of Abercorn. He was the sixth that enjoyed this honour; to preserve which he went to Scotland in 1706, and sat in that parliament which concluded the union between the two kingdoms, now called Great Britain.*
William nominated him a member of his privy council ; and farther, to mark his sense of his services, created him baron of Mountcastle, and viscount of Strabane, by which titles he sat in the Irish par- liament, September, 1703, which was the first summoned to meet by queen Anne, of whose privy council he was a member. He was selected in 1709, to draw up an address of condolence on the death of prince George of Denmark, and another of congratulation to the queen for her great successes abroad. He was a member of the privy council in the two succeeding reigns, and a zealous opponent of the claims of the Pretender^ In 1686 he married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Reading, bart., by whom he had nine sons and five daughters. He died in 1734.
Sir lEgr* CToott*
BORN A.D. 1726. — DIED A.D. 1783.
EYRE COOTE, youngest son of Chidley Coote, D.D. of Ash-hill, in the county of Limerick, early embraced the military profession ; and there is reason to believe that he was employed in active service during the rebellion of 1 745, when he could have been only nineteen. In the
* Lodge.
PERIOD.] SIR EYRE COOTE. 57
beginning of the year 1754, he embarked for the East Indies, and his name is honourably mentioned in the despatches of admiral Watson, when, after describing the warm bombardment of the forts of Calcutta, he states that the enemy was compelled to retire, and that captain Coote of the king's troops landed and took possession.* Sir Eyre, who then held the rank of captain, on the arrival of colonel Clive, had to yield the command; but in valour, skill, and energy, still retained his superiority. He assisted in taking several forts of importance; and, at the battle of Plassey, held a prominent and responsible position, and eminently contributed to the success of that distinguished day. After attaining the rank of colonel, he invested and took Wandemash, repulsed the attack of the French troops, who attempted to retake it, and, pursuing his advantage, completely routed and dispersed them, when they fled in dismay, with their discomfited leader to Pondicherry. In November of the same year, 1760, he laid siege to that important place, which contained a garrison of 1400 European soldiers, and was well calculated to make a long and successful resistance. It how- ever yielded, in less than two months, to his persevering and well- directed attacks, and by this decisive and unexpected blow, he com- pletely demolished the remaining power and ascendancy of the French in India. The town contained an immense quantity of military stores and treasure of all descriptions ; and the Court of Directors were so strongly impressed with the value of the acquisition, and the import- ance of his services, that on his return to England in the ensuing year, they presented him with .a diamond hilted-sword, which cost seven hundred pounds, as a mark of their gratitude and respect.
Having been appointed commander-in-chief of the East India Com- pany's forces, he went to Madras in 1770. He did not, however, remain there long, but proceeded to Bussorah, in consequence, it was supposed, of a dispute which occurred between him and the governor of Madras. He shortly after returned to England, overland, when he was invested with the order of the Bath, and afterwards obtained the colonelcy of the 37th regiment, with the governorship of Fort George in Scotland.
A life of inaction being uncongenial to his martial spirit, and the value and importance of his presence and services in India being too well understood by the government, to allow him to remain long unemployed, he was on the death of general Clavering, appointed a member of the supreme council of Bengal, and commander of the British forces in India.
On Hyder Ali assuming a menacing deportment and invading the Carnatic, general Coote was selected to oppose him, and was sent from Bengal with troops and money to the coast of Coromandel. Previous to his arrival, colonel Baillie had been despatched to check his progress, with three hundred European infantry, several battalions of sepoys, and some artillery; they were, however, nearly all cut to pieces after a brave resistance, and the scattered remnants were taken prisoners. Hyder also took possession of Arcot, and seemed to calcu- late on universal conquest. At this juncture general Coote arrived, and found the army reduced and dispirited. He revived their
* Ryan's Worthies.
58 POLITICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
drooping courage, led them on minor enterprises in which success was nearly certain; and when their hope and self-confidence were again renewed, he incited them to seek an encounter with the formidable Hyder himself; thus securing to them the enlivening consciousness of being the attackers, not the attacked, and stimulating them by every incentive, capable of acting on the noble and generous impulses of a British army. Hyder, whose army consisted of " twenty-five battal- ions of infantry ; four hundred Europeans ; from forty to fifty thousand horse; and above a hundred thousand match-lock men, Peons and Polygars, with forty-seven pieces of cannon," met his advances, confi- dent of success; and, trusting to his own overwhelming numbers, rushed impetuously forward to meet the advancing foe. Successive onsets were met and repelled, and the British troops kept their ground ; confident in their leader, they steadily pursued the course he had prescribed, and battalion upon battalion gave way before them. For eight hours the conflict was sustained on both sides with desperate and persevering obstinacy ; Meer Saib, Hyder's favourite general, fell mortally wounded; and, the leading officers of the Sultan's army rush- ing to supply his place, and avenge his fall, shared the same fate. The soldiers, deprived of their commanders, were slaughtered in immense numbers; so that the proportion of the fallen was, as thou- sands to hundreds of the British. Victory was no longer doubtful, and Hyder Ali never again recovered his ascendancy. The affairs of India took a different aspect, and succeeding conquests established the supremacy of the British sway.
Sir Eyre continued in India about three years longer, when his health began visibly to decline; his military ardour was, however, undiminished; and though in a very debilitated state, he removed from Calcutta to Madras, to assume the command of the army. The effort was too great, and he died April 24th, 1783, two days after his arrival there. His body was conveyed to England the following year, and was buried in the parish church of Rockwood, in Hampshire.
He married, in 1769, a daughter of Charles Hutchinson, Esq., but left no children; and, his property amounting to £200,000, was in- herited by his brother the dean of Kilfenora.
FROM the revolution in 1688, until a period included far within a subsequent division of this work, the constitution of this country ap- pears to have settled slowly and silently, into a more quiet, and more strictly political progress of affairs. The perpetual oscillation of open force between the two great sections of the population, in which san- guinary insurrections and revolutionary plots were succeeded by bloody retaliations, and cruel, though not unjust oppressions and deprivations, subsided into a tempered strife between the same classes under other names, and with different weapons. The acute and violent disorders which had deranged and menaced our existence, became chronic and thus continued to cripple and retard our growth. The ordinary resources of party warfare, such as have ever since been generally
PERIOD.] POSTSCRIPT. 59
resorted to, then began to be systematically employed. The events from this time became far less marked with the definite outlines and features of individual agency and distinct fact: the roots of affairs which were carried on by secret influence, are in a manner twisted together under the surface. As might be inferred from such a state of things, the guidance of authentic documents has in a great measure deserted us : the expositions of those who have undertaken to be the historians of the period are too extreme in their views to be relied on : for the most part, in their zeal to make out a case, they have neglected to keep in view the laws of possibility. It is chiefly from the corre- spondence of a few eminent men, in those times engaged in the conduct of affairs, that the true underworkings of the system as it existed in their time, can be brought to the test of written authority ; and these must, from their nature, be received with allowance and caution. Then, as now, party leaders had little fairness in the estimation of each other in Ireland.
These features of the times are important to be mentioned here, as they must influence our present course. The quietness of this inter- val, together with the character of the political machinery then mainly in action, was such as to preclude in a great measure that individual prominency of warriors and partisans, which, till now, have occupied our pages. Our government was mainly carried on by the deputies and lords -justices sent over officially, from England. The consequent absence of subjects for biography, such as to fall legitimately within the plan of these memoirs, renders it expedient to fulfil the properly historical part of our undertaking, by availing ourselves of a resource strictly within our limits.
The main events, and the general view of the political history of the reigns of the first two kings of the house of Hanover, will form an appropriate portion of our introduction to the political period next in succession. We may then include in such a statement rapid but sufficient sketches of Carteret, and other viceroys, who were the prin- cipal persons in the scene.
In the mean time, there is little of any real permanent importance within the same interval of time, that the reader may not find distinctly related among the ecclesiastical and literary lives which are now to follow in order. The government of Ireland during the time referred to here, was mainly conducted by the counsels of the great officers of the church and law. To these, therefore, and to the more general and methodical statement at the further period of our task, we must now refer the reader.
60 ECCLESIASTICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
ECCLESIASTICAL SERIES.
3)otteg, arcPteftop ot Duftlfm
SUCCEEDED A.D. 1605. — DIED A.D. 1619.
THOMAS JONES was a lineal descendant from the illustrious family of Herbert.* His father, Sir Roger Jones, was an alderman and sheriff of London, and knighted by king James L, at Whitehall. Thomas was born at the family-seat in Lancashire, and received his education at Cambridge. Having entered into holy orders, he came over to Ireland, and married Margaret Purdon, sister to the wife of Archbishop Loftus, an alliance by means of which, as Mr Dalton justly observes, he probably soon obtained preferment. On this, Mr Dalton quotes a remark of Mr Mason's worthy of repetition — there was "a singu- lar congruity in the events which befell each of these persons. They were educated in the same university, and ran the race of ambition together ; both were deans of St Patrick's, archbishops of Dublin, chancellors and lord justices of Ireland, they married two sisters, and each left a numerous progeny; while the elder branch of both families was en- nobled in the persons of their immediate heirs."f
Jones took his doctor's degree in the university of Dublin; was elected dean of St Patrick's in 1581; and in 1584 he was promoted to the see of Meath. In 1605, he was by the special recommendation of king James promoted to the see of Dublin. A few days after, he was appointed lord chancellor.
At the accession of James I., the state of the church in Ireland was one of ruin and dilapidation ; neither were its endowments sufficient to give efficacy to an establishment, circumstanced otherwise as it then was, in the midst of barbarism and civil disorder of every kind, and from every cause: nor were its ministers sufficiently qualified to diffuse the light so much wanting, in the surrounding moral and spirit- ual obscurity of the country. The church of Rome, at the same time, held a station and asserted an influence not much more advanced. But a series of workings and events were from this date about to set in, which was largely to alter and modify the condition of both. The chiefs were ignorant of letters and indifferent about religion: they only thought of recovering, extending, or securing their dominions, and preserving their iron jurisdiction over the people, on whom they lorded it with absolute control. This power was only to be maintained by preserv- ing the friendly outwork of that perfect ignorance, which, in its various degrees, is the fruitful mother of civil degradation. The church of Rome was, through some of its faithful servants, striving for a still de- nied and contested influence; but the progress which it had made had been hitherto insufficient to enable it to direct its force, with effect, against the rival church of England. It had yet enough to struggle
* Burke's Peerage. f Dalton's Archbishops of Dublin.
PERIOD.] THOMAS JONES, ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. 61
against, in the jealous opposition of the chiefs who had sagacity to perceive, that it might enlighten and must emancipate from their grasp those whom they so firmly controlled. So lax, accordingly, was the actual resistance to the supremacy asserted by the English church, that the laity of the Romish communion in Dublin were regular in their attendance at the parish church ; and this attendance, though enforced by a law, which, under other circumstances, might be justly called tyran- nical and harsh, was not the object of complaint. Though the law was severe, there had been no severity in the general spirit of its adminis- tration : it had been generally the mind of Queen Elizabeth's govern- ment to be strong in the assertion of power, but mild in its application ; and the principle was preserved in the case of the Romish church in Ireland.
The English church had its own disadvantages to cope with. In- sufficient both in its endowments and organization, its parochial clergy were not sufficiently provided in means or attainments, to bear up against the pressure of irreligion and ignorance, by which they were surrounded. It was not easy at that period, to find persons of suffi- cient spirit, information and ability, to execute so obscure and laborious, yet unpromising a task as that of an Irish country pastor, among a community as lawless as the absence of law can make human beings, and as untaught as the herds they tended or stole. For the reader will recollect that the ancient civilization of Ireland had been swept away by many centuries of internal war. In such a state of its means, and of the obstacles with which it had to cope, it cannot be surprising that an efficient ministry could not be provided, or that they were observed by John Davie to be " such poor ragged ignorant creatures, (for we saw many of them in the camp,) that we could not esteem any of them worthy of the meanest of these livings, albeit many of them are not worth 40 shillings per annum."*
With such a state of ecclesiastical affairs, the beginning and cause of worse, Jones had to bear an important part in struggling: the fol- lowing long, but not too long extract, contains his valuable testimony on the same subject — " I humbly pray my true excuse may be con- sidered of, which is, that I cannot get curates to supply the service of these churches ; the rectories are impropriate, and the farmers cannot be drawn to yield any competent means to a minister, for serving the cure ; besides, if we could get means, we cannot possibly get ministers ; for the natives of this kingdom being generally addicted to popery, do train up their children to superstition and idolatry, so soon as they come of age to send them beyond the seas, from whence they return either priests, Jesuits, or seminaries, enemies to the religion establish- ed, and pernicious members to the state. Such English ministers and preachers as come hither out of England, we do but take them upon credit, and many times they prove of a dissolute life, which doth much hurt. I do humbly desire a small supply of ministers, and I will have an especial care of their placing in the best manner I can. Some livings are fallen void, since the beginning of this visitation, for which I know not how to provide incumbents for the present."f
» Hist. Relations. f Mant. Hist. Ir. Church.
62 ECCLESIASTICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
Jones had the merit of exercising considerable and effective vigi- lance and activity within his episcopal jurisdiction. He contrived amid the dearth of knowledge which then prevailed, to fill the pulpits of his diocese, and especially the city of Dublin, with persons of competent learning and piety. He repaired and restored the edifice of Christ- church, then fast sinking into ruin.
He died in Dublin, in April 1619, and was buried in St Patrick's church, near the communion-table.*
He left a son, who was afterwards created Viscount Ranelagh, and Baron Jones of Navan.
to ©tottro, titular &rd)6tef)op of Uufiltm
Or the life of this ecclesiastic, very few particulars have been gleaned by the pious diligence, though aided by the learned research of Mr Dalton. Nor should we think it necessary to introduce here any special notice of one of whom we have nothing to relate, that has not been better told in that learned gentleman's pages, were it not that his peculiar connexion with his church in Ireland, affords a continuous link in the chain of our history.
Duly to understand the brief and summary view which our pledged limits permit us to offer of the ecclesiastical history of the commence- ment of the 17th century, it is absolutely necessary that the reader should be possessed of, and bear in mind that more general state of the age in this island, which we have laboured to keep in view, through the entire of our previous memoirs. For as we have already noticed, there are two very distinct histories of the same events, which, neither of them being substantially untrue, are yet each calculated to convey views which are diametrically opposed to each other. The long and violent struggle between the English and Irish, and its subsequent re- sult, that between the churches of England and Rome, were in their dif- ferent stages marked by incidents, which, when isolated from their real causes both in fact, and in the spirit of the respective times, are capa- ble of being constructed into cases of great strength, for the most part very different from the truth of history. There is, however, to look no farther than the principle, this much in favour of the pro- testant historians, that for the most part they are not controversial — that is, they are not written with an express design to make out any particular case, — their statements are uncoloured by advocacy. There is yet also a previous and more important distinction in their favour: allowing, as we are disposed on much patient study to do, circumstan- tial truth to both, the protestant historians deal less in sweeping omissions of the real moving agencies of the period before us; the statements which they give are the causes and beginnings of those very trains of events, which appear in the writings of the Romish his- torians, not only disconnected from these causes, but connected with
* Dalton.
PERIOD.] MATTHEW DE OVEIDO. 63
other mediate incidents in the chain from which they derive an entirely different face. It is evident how in this way, those who have mainly to dwell on a certain class of consequences, may preserve the actual truth of facts consistently with that narrow species of candour, which regards not the justice of the construction.
The historians who deal in elaborate representations ot the persecu- tions by which they pretend to imagine that the Romanists of this time were driven into rebellion, are widely remote indeed from the truth, in their statements respecting those persecutions ; but totally untrue in the inference. They forget in their narratives the entire state of things then existing. A strict regard to the whole truth would in these pre- sent times be most desirable for both parties, as well as most just. If instead of attempting to repel severe and bitter charges, by fallacious recriminations and evasive denials, the writer of this day had rather looked on the reality of causes and events, and endeavoured to separate their actual state from most prejudicial retrospects, they might have turned away the eye of political opposition from many questions, from the discussion of which they have derived no advantage to their actual object.
In the end of the 16th century, every denomination of religion had attained the lowest comparative level in Ireland. There was no dif- fusive spirit either political or religious among any class or rank of the people : there was no pervading system of government, and no uni- form administration of law. Altogether there existed a singularly disjoined and disorderly condition of things. Two distinct communi- ties regarded each other with fear, distrust and vigilance. Of the great chiefs, among whom the main part of the island was divided, all were nominally subjects of the English crown. But virtually some held their toparchies in absolute right by the tenures of the ancient law, while others were the acknowledged subjects of the king. Again, of those latter, some were truly and by affection, as well as from interest, subjects of the crown; while others held from motives of present policy, arising out of fear or interest. Some desired protec- tion from the usurpations of their more powerful neighbours. Some had objects of a less warrantable description. The whole was one tissue of intrigue, oppression, violence and circumvention; in which very like the commonwealth of the great deep, the large fishes lived in the perpetual chace and demolition of the smaller. To enlighten the obscurity, and lessen the horrors of this anomalous and diseased con- stitution of society, the priests of both the Protestant, the ancient Irish, and the Roman churches, laboured in their several vocations. Between them, there were some important differences of various kinds, but no private ill-will or personal antagonism. The whole importance of their differences was not very fully appreciated by either; and both were held in slight veneration by the ignorant and wild populace of the forest and moorish pastures, and their barbaric tyrants, who much dis- liked and scornfully resisted every influence, which tended, however re- motely, towards the equalizing principle of civilization.
In the general state of the country thus described, the particulars of which may be found substantiated in our political section, there was a more continued and more systematic struggle at the same time in
64 ECCLESIASTICAL SERIES. [FOURTH
operation, caused by the efforts of the English government, to rule or to reduce to amity and order this heterogeneous mass. From this we have already in detail traced the causes and effects, the necessary and the mistaken severities, the violent resistances and retaliations, and the varied cases of official malversation and private abuse of power, inseparable according to the laws of human nature from such times. Among these, the history of two Irish chiefs is to be referred to here, as mainly influencing and giving a determinate direction to the for- tunes of the Irish churches.
Through the entire of our memoirs of the chiefs who were engaged in the wars of Tyrone, we have had to describe the incidents- to which we must now be contented to refer. The animosity of Red Hugh O'Donel, the chief of Tyrconnel, had been intensely and permanently excited by the deep personal injuries he had received from the Irish administration. The restless O'Neile was the dupe and victim of his own ambitious and intriguing temper: unwilling to acquiesce in the constraints of the English power, and unequal to cope with it, his life had been a succession of conspiracies, outbreaks and submissions. While these were working themselves slowly into a position of resist- ance, and collecting form from year to year, by the union of kindred elements ; the court of Spain, engaged in war with England, was skil- fully and actively engaged in pouring into the fiery but chaotic mix- ture, an element of life and combination, and in this was seconded ef- fectually, though cautiously, and with apparent forbearance, by the more tempered and long-sighted policy of the church of Rome.
A swarm of Spanish monks of different orders, and in various cha- racters and disguises, sent over to unite, inflame, and at the same time promise, assistance in men, money and arms, gave hope and assurance to the spirit of enterprise; but above all, it was the main duty of their mission to infuse the exalting and combining principle of spiritual animosity. The chiefs, who conspired from ambition or re- venge, gladly entered into the pretext which gave a sanction to their insubordination, and a common ground of appeal to their countrymen : they threw heart and voice into the spirit-stirring motive, and instead of being rebels, rejoiced to find themselves champions of the Catholic church.
The results are known to our readers. The bait was taken, and although the Irish chiefs failed to attain the real objects for which they took arms, the pretended views were in the event more successful. The power of the Irish aristocracy was for ever broken, and their sway over the people handed over to their priests, who from this period be- gan to acquire that vast and irresistible influence which they have hitherto been skilful to retain.
At the time of which we write, it is but just and fair to state, that the influence here attributed to a foreign priesthood, cannot be fairly imputed to the secular clergy of the Irish church. Of these it will be at present enough to quote Leland, the most authoritative historian of Ireland. Having stated in his text the fact that " intelligence was daily spread by popish ecclesiastics of the vast and terrible prepara- tions made by Spain, to overwhelm all England at once, by an irresis- tible invasion," he adds this note, " Candour obliges us to acknow-
PERIOD.] MATTHEW DE OVEIDO. 65
ledge that the Romish clergy at this period did not uniformly concur in exciting the Irish to insurrections. Sullivan himself confesses (though it was his business to represent the zeal of his countrymen in the most favourable point of view), that a considerable party among this clergy recommended a dutiful submission to government, and opposed the practices of their more intemperate brethren."
We have already related the train of events which, in the year 1579? and the following years, led to the downfall of the princely but rebellious house of Desmond in the south. Of these, the peculiar historical interest is derived mainly from the part taken in the contest which led to this event by the king of Spain, who sent over a small force accompanied by several Spanish ecclesiastics : and the interposi- tion of popes Pius and Gregory, who successively sanctioned the ad- venturous undertaking, by the formal authority of their bulls, in which the projects of James Fitz-Maurice, and John of Desmond, were duly consecrated by an authority which was fast gaming a most fatal pre- ponderance in Ireland. The struggle was for the occasion, soon closed by a bloody fight, in which the Jesuit Allan, who had raised the papal standard and promised certain victory, was slain: and the other lead- ers, military and ecclesiastical, who led or cheered the Irish by their presence, scattered in irretrievable dispersion, to meet their deaths by the various accidents of famine or capture. Among the Spanish priests who were sent over on this occasion, Matteo Oveido was one ; and on the suppression of the insignificant outbreak, which in Spain had been magnified into a national rebellion, he contrived to find his way home. In this he was perhaps favoured by the arrival of two more of his brethren, with arms and ammunition from Spain, who re- turned immediately on learning the true state of affairs.
A second time in the year 1600, Matteo returned on a similar mis- sion, but in more dignified character and with higher authority. The incident has been already described in our memoir of the rebel earl of Tyrone, to whom on this occasion he brought from the pope messages of encouragement, and exhortations %to activity, confirmed by the gift of a consecrated plume of Phoenix feathers. To give the utmost weight to the apostolic mission, he came in the character of archbishop of Dublin. Justly considering that his mission had a larger scope, he proceeded without pause into Ulster ; and the hope of Desmond having by this time been extinguished by the valour and conduct of Carew, he hastened to "deliver his credentials" to O'Neile and O'Donel.* Having obtained from these chiefs the solemn assurance of their co-operation, he returned to Spain, and once more came back with the well-known expedition of Don Juan de Aquila, in October, 1601.|
We have already, with sufficient fulness, stated the events of the time and the main particulars of the course pursued by the several parties. It belongs more particularly to our present purpose, to state that a proclamation, printed in Spain, was immediately circulated. It strongly impressed the sin and danger of fighting for Queen Elizabeth, " an excommunicated